(Puteoli, near Neapolis, on the Campanian coast)
Marcus Falerius Fronto, confidante of Caesar, legate of the Tenth Equestrian Legion, Roman citizen, Patrician and hero of the Gaulish wars, sulked and dragged his feet.
“Come on or we’ll be late for the meal.” Lucilia Balba rolled her eyes as she cast a despairing look at her man. There were times when Fronto appeared not to have passed his seventh year of childhood.
Amid the hum of nature, Fronto gave her a cantankerous frown and glanced over his shoulder as he adjusted the new silken tunic that clung all too tight to his scarred, lean frame and, to his mind, made him look a little too feminine.
The Forum Vulcani loomed almost a mile distant, the ring of jagged rock standing high around a white-yellow crater that jetted and fumed continually with spurts of steam and sprays of hot mud. Despite his almost legendary pragmatism, the Forum Vulcani continued to hold a certain unspoken trepidation for Fronto. He knew the gurgling mud and jets of steam were simply the work of Vulcan’s forge beneath the world but in the stories of his youth, told by the elders and menfolk of coastal Campania, the great bubbling, steaming horseshoe was the entrance to Hades. His childhood best friend Laelius had once sworn he saw a great three-headed dog prowling amid the jets. It was impossible to shake off the dread, despite his adult practicality.
And this infuriating woman had brought him here to lounge in the steam and slap stinging hot mud on his more scarred and ugly patches of skin in the crazed belief that being thoroughly coated with grey-brown sludge was somehow ‘healing’. It certainly hadn’t made his bones ache less or removed the burgeoning hangover, though the faint scalding sensation that had reddened much of his flesh had at least taken his mind off the left knee that had started to give these days if he walked up and down hills too often.
“The meal can wait for us. I’m the patriarch of the house, remember?”
“Yes, dear. You’re a fine patriarch, but you’ll be a fine patriarch with a charred meal and a furious sister if we don’t hurry.”
Fronto gave the great steaming mountain a suspicious frown — he thought he’d seen it move for a moment — and turned back to face the mass of Puteoli ahead and below, not quite in time to avoid treading in a large pile of dung deposited by one of the numerous trade caravans that had come here from the other great port nearby, at Neapolis.
“Shit!”
“Indeed, my love. Horse-shit, I fear.”
Fronto grumbled and hoisted the leather bag with their wet clothes higher onto his shoulder so that he could concentrate on wiping his rough military-issue sandals on the kerb to remove the worst of the ordure.
Lucilia gave him an odd smile and then turned away, humming a happy little tune as she picked up the pace a little, strolling down the hill toward the expansion work on the small amphitheatre — pride of the council of Puteoli.
Briefly, Fronto cast a longing gaze down the slope. Spring had come to Puteoli, bringing a bounteous spray of flora, whose scent almost managed to mask the salt tang of the sea. Bees buzzed and cicadas chirruped, birds sang and unidentified wildlife rustled all along both sides of the road that led from Neapolis to Puteoli via the Forum Vulcani. But it was not the bounty of nature or the sheer joy of spring that drew his hungry gaze.
Somewhere, down beyond the oval amphitheatre and past the various baths and temples, right down toward the port, looking out over the water to the distant hump of Baia and the mound of Misenum on the far side of the bay, stood the small building that drew his thoughts. The ‘Leaping Dolphin’ was a tavern that served wine of questionable quality, allowed some of the more unsavoury types to abuse its hospitality, hosted theoretically-fair dice games, and showcased some of the cheaper exotic women in the region.
That tavern had drained his purse every winter since he’d been of age to join the military. And yet this year, he’d not put a foot across its threshold.
Regretfully, he tore his gaze from the glorious landscape and the lowbrow establishment hidden somewhere at its centre and turned off on the side road, following Lucilia.
Despite some regret that resided at a deep level and was chiselled into his heart, he had to admit that he’d not really missed the carousing until he’d actually had cause to think on it — not in the company he’d kept over the winter.
It had been nice. It had been an… adjustment, but it had certainly been nice. He’d found himself a number of times over the colder months wishing that the young lady who had apparently captured him without the use of net or spear could have helped warm his bed rather than sleeping in a resolutely virginal chamber on the far side of the villa, adjacent to Faleria’s room ‘just in case’.
The nights after his wine intake had been higher and less watered than met Faleria’s approval had been particularly difficult.
He watched Lucilia’s figure sway alluringly down the gravelled road toward the complex of villa buildings that clung to the hillside, overlooking the azure sea and the ships arriving from every corner of the world. It was almost hypnotic.
He winced as he remembered that night after the Saturnalia celebrations when the sway of those hips had taunted him just too much and he had found himself, insulated by a thick layer of wine, standing in just his underwear and trying to lift the latch to Lucilia’s room with a paring knife. His hands had slipped repeatedly from the target in a pleasant haze, carving furrows in the surrounding wood and leaving scratches on the iron plate.
He had spent almost ten minutes trying and had finally drawn a deep breath ready to call to the room’s intoxicating occupant when he had become aware of his sister, standing outside her own door, watching him with an expression that would have split a block of marble or sent a thousand Gallic horse galloping for the hills.
He had dropped the paring knife in alarm and it had punctured his foot. Just another reminder of how far his influence as patriarch really stretched when Faleria was in residence. His mother had ruled the family with an iron fist after his father’s death, until the death of Verginius in Hispania had left Faleria preparing for a wedding with a deceased man. The girl had hardened that day into a classic Roman matron and had immediately surpassed their mother in her rigid and humourless control of the house for all too many years.
He shook his head again.
But Faleria had changed again since he’d been away campaigning in Gaul. She had softened once more to something resembling the Faleria of his youth. Certainly the addition of Lucilia to the household seemed to have had a powerful effect on her.
‘Softened’, but not ‘weakened’.
Fronto sighed. It had taken him only a few weeks to realise that in signing away his soul to this girl, he had simply added a third headstrong female to the list of those who thought they could rule and control him. Sadly, it appeared that they were correct in that assumption. Caesar, Pompey and Crassus could learn a thing or two from the three women commanding the house of the Falerii these days.
“I’ve been thinking…”
Lucilia turned slightly to regard him curiously as they closed on the villa.
“You should watch that, Marcus. Such activity rarely leads to good things.”
Another deep sigh.
“I wonder whether it’s time to start edging Faleria toward…” he swallowed nervously. This was like addressing the senate and asking for a favour. “Toward perhaps looking at a new match?”
Lucilia shook her head.
“She says she’s too old.”
“You’ve discussed it with her?” Fronto was seriously taken aback. He’d been trying to work out a way to broach the subject for two years now.
“At some length. I tried to persuade her that thirty is still an acceptable age and that she has a few years to bear children yet.”
“You said what?”
“Faleria is, I think, happy with her station. I think she will never love another like her lost husband, and so she is happy not to try. She knows that at her age, with the lineage and value of the Falerii, she will likely only attract leery old men or greedy young nobodies hungry for power and station. Given that it is now more than possible that you will be able to continue the line, your mother is happy to leave Faleria to her own devices.”
Fronto stopped in a squelch of horse dung and dropped the sack of wet clothes with a similar noise.
“You even spoke to mother about this?”
“Oh calm down. You’ll do yourself an injury. Women talk, Marcus. I’m sure you’re aware of this. What did you think we did while you and your pet servants went down to the races or sat in the cellar playing Latrunculi, draining your father’s carefully stocked wines?”
Fronto stared at her as something she had said clicked in his head.
“’Continue the line’?”
“Children, Marcus” she said, rolling her eyes as she stooped to lift the bag of clothes and throw it over her shoulder. “I’m sure you’ve heard of them. Small people who cry a lot and fall over regularly.”
She set off along the road again, leaving Fronto standing, baffled, until he shook his head and ran after her.
“Don’t you think you’re getting a little ahead of things there? We’ve yet to even ask your father if he’ll agree to the match. You may think your mother will persuade him, but I’m not so sure. And then there’s Caesar. The Agonia Martialis is already passed and the legions will be starting to move in Gaul. If I don’t hear from the general by the end of Aprilis I shall have to ride to Rome and prepare for the coming season. I’ll only be around for another month or so. Caesar has a plan, I think, to expand his horizons ever further. I will be gone for the whole campaigning season, probably for years yet.”
This time it was Lucilia who stopped dead and it took Fronto another five flustered steps to realise and draw himself to a halt.
“You don’t need to serve, if you don’t wish to” she said, quietly, but with a dangerous edge.
Fronto shook his head.
“Caesar is our patron. My family and yours, both. And I am one of his senior officers. If he needs me then I shall have to…”
“Tripe. Drivel. My father supports Caesar and maintains his patronage out of loyalty. He owes nothing to the man. And you? If I understand what your mother tells me, it is Caesar who theoretically owes the Falerii a small sum, and not the other way round. You run at his beckon because you live for the legions. That will change.”
Fronto thrust an angry finger towards her, but she smiled and walked past him once more on her way to the villa.
“Come on. We’ll be late for the meal.”
Fronto stood amid the buzz of bees and the chatter of birds, the hazy blue of the bay providing a strange background to the seething, roiling churn of emotions that held him fast. After a few moments he realised how foolish he must look — standing and angrily gesturing to the open air — checked for any passing observers and, finding none, hurried after the beautiful Lucilia.
Two days later, Fronto hurried out into the courtyard before the villa, taking no time to breathe in the joyous warm evening air, with a scent of jasmine and roses. His sandals flapped around him, the straps loose and untied, threatening to trip him with every step.
“What bloody time do you call this?”
Galronus, noble of the Remi tribe, beloved of Lug and Taranis, lord among the fierce Belgae, dismounted easily from his roan mare and alighted smoothly, dusting himself down as he released the reins. Fronto looked him up and down with an unabashed grin of happiness.
A second winter in Rome had wrung even more changes to the rough figure of Galronus the Gaul. Though he still wore the traditional moustaches of his people, his long hair, once wild and untamed, now had that lustrous sheen and smoothness that only comes with regular attention from an expensive barber and was plaited down before one ear and tied back at the nape of his neck. His skin had that clean smooth look of a man who had managed at least three visits a day to the baths. His sole concessions to his native dress seemed to be the continued wearing of the braccae — the Gallic trousers that bulged at the thigh and reached to the ankles — and a torc around his neck, although even that had an unmistakable look of Roman metalwork.
“Marcus!” The big Gaul left his reins hanging and ran across the courtyard to enfold the dishevelled Roman in a great bear hug. Fronto issued an involuntary squeak at the pressure, but grinned as Galronus let him go. The Belgic nobleman even smelled of scented bath oils. Good job there’d be no chance for him to attend such grand bathhouses back in Gaul; else his tribe would tear him to pieces for womanliness.
“You have spent the winter in a comfortable villa with your own baths and slaves and servants?” Galronus enquired with a furrowed brow.
Fronto nodded as one of those slaves hurried across to take the reins of the visitor’s horse.
“Why then does your hair stand up like this and why do you smell like old amphorae, and why is your tunic stained and creased?”
Fronto rolled his eyes.
“I think I miss the Galronus who had never even heard of a heated bath. Come on.”
Grasping his shoulder, Fronto guided him towards the door that led into the decorative atrium.
“What draws you away from the delights of Rome?”
Galronus shrugged off the leather bag that hung over one arm and stopped in the atrium as it dropped to the marble floor with a thud. Stooping, he rummaged in it for a moment and then straightened, holding out a wooden writing tablet.
“This.”
Fronto took the item, frowning, and snapped it open. His brow rose as he recognised the handwriting.
“Caesar gave you this? It’s not sealed or anything.”
Galronus shrugged.
“Perhaps he trusts me.”
Fronto eyed him askance. “Or perhaps you broke the seal and had a good read before you left Rome.”
Galronus blinked his innocence, his face devoid of expression, and Fronto shook his head as he snapped it shut.
“I’ll read it when we’re settled. For now, it’s late. We’ve had an evening repast, but I daresay we can rustle you something up. And I’ve just broken the seal on some nice Sicilian wine. How’s the house?”
Galronus had taken up residence during autumn in the burned out shell of the townhouse of the Falerii on the Aventine hill, keeping the place occupied as the workmen continued to return it to a liveable state after the fights and fires of the previous year.
“Less than half complete, I’d say. There was more structural fire damage than originally anticipated, and the winter weather has made it difficult for the workmen. It may be another year before it resembles your home again.”
Fronto nodded. It came as no surprise to him. At least the family could spend the year in Puteoli and not worry about it yet.
A sudden flurry of activity announced the arrival of the girls and Fronto glanced over his shoulder before raising his eyes skywards again.
“Brace yourself.”
Stepping aside, he watched with some satisfaction as Faleria and Lucilia mobbed the large Gaul, almost knocking him from his feet and chattering their pleasure at his arrival. Turning his attention from the spectacle, Fronto snapped open the wooden tablet again and ran his eyes down the message within.
Caesar’s handwriting had always been tight, small and economic, though gifted with an almost oratorical turn of phrase even in such short form.
To M Falerius Fronto from C Iulius Caesar, Proconsul of Gaul,
Felicitations.
Having received tidings of your joyous situation, it is with regret that I now send news of the opening of the campaigning season.
Fronto frowned. How in the name of the seven whores of Capernum had the general heard of his predicament?
It had been my intention to travel late to Gaul, perhaps even during Maius, since there have been no signs of renewed insurrection or hostility to the Roman state and the missives from my subordinates have assured me that the process of drawing Gaul into the fold proceeds apace.
Again, Fronto frowned. The letter had been clearly written carefully in case it should fall into the wrong hands, or perhaps Caesar had even expected Galronus to open it en route? Fronto remembered clearly his last conversation with the general, when the man had avowed his intent to take the Pax Romana and stuff it down the throat of the next Celtic nation he found.
However, it would appear that a number of Germanic tribes, driven from their own lands by a vast eastern tribe of even more unyielding barbarians, have crossed the Rhenus and settled in the lands of our Belgae subjects, defending their presence with extreme violence. While it has never been the intention of Rome or this proconsulate to bring war to those tribes beyond that great river,
Fronto rolled his eyes at the line and shook his head.
it is now clearly necessary to mobilize the legions in northern Gaul to repel these invaders and support our Belgic people. To this end, I am summoning all of my officers to return to their commands at their earliest convenience. A trireme under my command is docked at Ostia, and has begun to make the journey to and from Massilia as required in order to ferry said officers to the nearest port.
Our Graeco-Gallic allies in Massilia have agreed to provide a place in their agora for a staging post for us. From there, you will be required to travel north along the Rhodanus, past the allied townships of Vienna and Vesontio, with which you will be familiar. The army will be encamped close to the oppidum of Divoduron in the lands of the Mediomatrici some one hundred and fifty miles to the north of Vesontio.
I trust you will be able to reach your command by the Kalends of Maius.
In the name of the senate and people of Rome.
Your friend,
Caius.
Fronto looked up from the note to see that the clamorous reunion between his friend and the women of the household seemed to have died down. Galronus was looking at him over the heads of the two women, a question in his eyes. Fronto nodded silently.
“Come on ladies. Let our guest at least recover a little from his journey before you bombard him with questions. We’ll come and meet you in the triclinium within the hour.”
Lucilia flashed him a hard look that he prudently ignored, but Faleria caught his eye and must have recognised something, for she nodded and clasped Lucilia’s hand.
“Come on. Let the boys play for a while. They have such little time to act like children.”
Lucilia frowned and the two women made for the doorway to the triclinium, while Fronto collected Galronus’ bag and led him off toward the far end of the villa, where he was wont to pass the time.
“You read the message?”
“I did. He moves earlier than I expected.”
From across the room, a sharp female voice snapped out.
“What?”
Fronto turned in surprise and realised that the two ladies had not yet fully left the room, pausing instead to chat in the doorway. He cursed inwardly for having spoken openly and too soon.
“Nothing, Lucilia. We’ll be along shortly.”
But the dark haired girl had already torn herself from Faleria’s grasp and was storming across the atrium so resolutely Fronto feared she would walk straight through the impluvium pool in the centre without noticing.
“Lucilia…”
“No! You’re leaving? It’s too early. You said you wouldn’t go until the end of Aprilis. My father is going to Rome in a few weeks. I was going to take you there to meet him. We need to speak to him.”
Fronto quailed and stepped back as the whirlwind of furious womanhood approached.
“It’s just a few more months, Lucilia. I’ll be back before winter, and then…”
“No. I will not spend a whole extra summer as a guest with no formal ties to the house. You persuaded me not to travel in winter, else we’d have seen father sooner. You’ll not delay our betrothal any further.”
“Lucilia, I have to go. I have been summoned to my post by the Proconsul of Gaul. It’s only half a year. I’ve waited this long, after all…” he regretted the words almost before they’d left his tongue and the colour draining from the face of the young lady threatened a violent disagreement and likely some thrown crockery.
Galronus opened his mouth and took a pace forward, but Lucilia held a hand up, palm facing him.
“No. You find somewhere to make yourself comfortable. Marcus and I are going to have a talk.”
Fronto cast one desperate, pleading look at Galronus as Lucilia grabbed his arm and, yanking, turned him back to the door before dragging him through it. The large Gaul carefully avoided meeting his gaze and then turned back to the atrium, wondering whether it would be possible to follow them and ask for his travelling bag. Prudence won out and he decided against it.
“Galronus, it has been too long.”
He smiled at Faleria and stepped around the small pool towards her.
“Have they been like this all winter?”
Faleria nodded. “I think he missed male company. You should have come earlier.”
Galronus cast an embarrassed eye down to the floor. ”I had… other pursuits. The games; the racing; I even watched one of your plays, although it lacks the power of the storytellers among my people. The masks are funny, though. And some of the singing made me laugh,”
Faleria nodded encouragingly. She daren’t ask what play he had attended; she was almost certain it would have been a tragedy. Certainly with Galronus in the audience laughing like a gurgling drain.
“How long will you be here? Are you taking him straight away?”
Galronus shrugged. “I think we can squeeze a few days out. The traders in Rome say that the sea is remarkably calm even for the time of year, so we will make good time, especially if we take a ship straight from Neapolis or Puteoli, rather than riding back to Rome.”
Faleria smiled wickedly. “Marcus does so love to travel by sea. I think we can defuse the situation between the two young lovebirds. If you travel to Gaul by ship, you will make landfall at Massilia. Lucilia and I will accompany you thus far, where we can meet with Balbus, her father, and sort this mess out.”
“You will come too?”
Faleria smiled benignly. “Would you seriously expect Marcus to cope with all the betrothal arrangements himself? No, I think I should accompany you to straighten it all out.”
“I do not wear socks!”
Lucilia glared at Fronto and snatched the woollen garments from his hand, stuffing them back into his pack.
“Yes you do. You’ll be traipsing through soggy swamps above the roof of the world. Do you really want your toes to rot and fall off? Because I do not.”
“I don’t need socks because I wear boots that are perfectly sized and shaped to my feet. They’re closed boots and nice and dry and there’s no room in them for both socks and my feet.”
“You’re not taking your old boots.”
Fronto blinked and straightened.
“Now listen…”
“You cannot take your boots, Marcus. I threw them out last week.”
Fronto tried to say something but it came out only as indignant splutters.
“I saw the manufacturer’s mark on them, Marcus. Those boots were nearly as old as me. And they smelled of stale urine.”
“Of course! That’s how you shape them to your feet. It took me nearly a year’s pissing to make them comfortable enough for a thirty mile march.”
Lucilia shook her head calmly.
“You’re a senior officer from a patrician family and currently the legatus of a legion. You ride; you don’t need to march.”
Fronto stared at her.
“Besides, you have a thoroughbred horse of unsurpassed quality. It would be wasteful not to run him. Now try on the boots over there. They’re light leather with a fleece inner to help you in the harsh climates of Gaul.”
Fronto’s gaze snapped back and forth between the boots on the chair and the woman pointing at them.
“Is there any chance that at some point in the past you have commanded a legion, too?”
Lucilia said nothing, but simply gestured impatiently at the boots.
With a sigh, he capitulated.
Fronto staggered along the deck and reached an empty stretch of rail almost in time to vomit copiously over the side without splattering the deck. His face had been a pale grey for the past two days, with only a brief return of colour during the overnight stop at Antium.
“Did you use the embrocation the nice Greek gave you?”
Fronto spat into the water and tried not to concentrate on the way it moved, undulated, wobbled, oscillated…
After another copious session of dry heaving, Fronto wiped his mouth again and look across at Lucilia at the rail nearby; neatly keeping her sandaled feet out of the mess he had left.
“No I didn’t. It smells like feet. I hadn’t thrown up until I opened the jar and smelled it. That’s what set this whole thing off.”
“Rubbish. And I expect you’ve not had any of the ginger root?”
“It makes me hiccup.”
“And vomiting is preferable to hiccupping, is it?”
“Just leave me alone.”
Fronto draped himself over the rail for just a moment until the additional pressure and movement threatened a whole new session of agony. Hauling himself back upright, he focused his eyes and frowned.
“That’s Ostia.”
“Yes.”
“Why did nobody say we were almost there?”
Lucilia smiled like a patient parent.
“If you’d looked up any time in the past hour you’d have seen it. And everyone on board has been talking about landfall. You’ve just been too wrapped up in your own embrocation-and-ginger-free misery to notice.”
“I hate ships.”
“Of this I am acutely aware, Marcus.”
“When I was a boy, my father took me out fishing in the bay below the villa. I was sick in his lunch basket. He never took me again. Should they even be sailing in this weather? Shouldn’t they wait for a good day, and then I’d have had a better journey.”
Lucilia rolled her eyes as she took in the cloudless blue sky, the slight heat haze that made the approaching dockside of Ostia shimmer, the glassy, reflective surface of the water, broken only by the lowest, friendliest of waves and the wake of various mercantile vessels ploughing back and forth from the dockside.
“It is a dreadful day, I have to admit. I wonder whether Neptune is furious at you for ignoring your medically-prescribed embrocation?”
Fronto glared at her before turning his attention back to the busy town before them, as they approached at speed, a wide dockside presenting a spacious opening for them. More than a hundred merchants, slaves, fishermen and sailors went about their chores on the dock: hauling crates, coiling ropes, arguing and haggling over lists. Beggars and children cut purses, touted their flesh to passing trade, or just called out desperately for a spare coin.
It was chaos but, as they watched, it was clearly a very organized chaos. Ostia was rapidly becoming a more common offloading point for goods bound for Rome than the older ports at Puteoli or Neapolis.
Fronto held his breath as the merchant vessel began to slew sideways towards the concrete and the waiting dockhand. That first bump often knocked him from his feet, with his knees as feeble as they were after a day of being sick over a rail.
His attention, however, was distracted by a sudden glint of blinding light. Squinting, he tried to look past it and suddenly the dazzling beam was gone, leaving the source: a burnished cuirass of golden bronze that had reflected the glorious sun.
“Who are they?” a quiet voice enquired.
Fronto turned to see that Faleria had joined them at his other side. He spun back and examined the small group of men on the dock, trying to get a better view of their faces. It quickly became apparent that the five soldiers on the dockside constituted two separate groups, rather than one large one.
“I don’t know the two centurions, but they’re veterans. You can tell that just from the look of them. I think…”
Fronto’s knuckles whitened as his grip on the rail tightened.
“Their shields! They’d do well to keep the covers on” he growled.
“What is it?” Lucilia asked, her eyes narrowing as she tried in vain to see whatever Fronto had spotted.
“Their shields are still painted in the designs of the 2nd Italic; one of Lucullus’ legions.”
“So?”
Fronto turned to look at Lucilia as if she were an idiot, an expression he couldn’t hide, despite the warning signs it drew in her eyes.
“That means they served under Pompey in the east against Mithridates. Hell, they might even have been the mutineers that the scheming little prick Clodius paid off, and who nearly screwed up the whole campaign. If they’re waiting to join Caesar’s trireme, I may have to have strong words with the general.”
“But that campaign was what? Ten years ago? They’ve probably been civilians for years in between.”
“Once a shitbag, always a shitbag, Lucilia.”
“Who are the others, then?” Faleria asked, trying to calm her brother.
Fronto tried not to look at the two veterans; heavy set men with bristly faces and iron grey hair and traitorous shields. Instead, he fixed his gaze on the three more senior officers, clad in burnished cuirasses, crimson cloaks, plumed helms and bronze greaves. Their tunics and pteruges were spotless white. They could have been posing for a heroic statue in the forum. They quite clearly had the military bearing of a huddle of lame ostriches.
“The two at the far side I vaguely recognize. Menenius, I think. Can’t remember the other’s name. They’ve been on staff since the Belgae revolted two years ago. Tribunes that were attached to the Eleventh or Twelfth. Possibly both.” He shook his head. “Eleventh. Must be. Only one of the tribunes of the Twelfth survived Octodurus last year.”
The two junior tribunes were chattering away like the mindless, excited youths that so often filled the role. Only one junior tribune in every ten posted to the army had even the faintest idea which end of a sword to grip and which end to poke into the enemy. As he watched, one of the two reared back his head and issued a squawking laugh that grated on Fronto’s nerves and ran right down his spine. His spirits sank at the thought of a three day voyage to Massilia in the company of that laugh. Fops and morons. It said much of their effectiveness and involvement that in two years of service Fronto could not actually remember seeing or hearing of them, except in briefings.
“They’re about as useful as a parchment shield. And about as welcome as a turd in a bath house.”
“And the other one?”
Fronto squinted again.
“Don’t know him. Tall. Obviously patrician. Could do with a little bit more chin and a lot less forehead. He should get on very well with those other two donkeys. He’s got a broad stripe on his tunic, though. He’s going to be a senior tribune.”
He spun from the rail.
“If that ostrich gets assigned to me, I shall take great pleasure in giving him a shield and standing him in the front row when we meet a bunch of screaming Celts.”
Faleria shook her head with a slight smile.
“Steady, Marcus.”
“I’ll have you know that I…” he began angrily, and then lost his footing and slipped in his own outpouring as the ship bounced briefly off the dock before connecting once again and scraping woodenly along the sheer face.
“I told you to be steady” Faleria said with insufferable smugness.
“Ladies?”
Fronto, whose grip on the rail had been the only thing that had prevented him from slamming down to the deck, backside first, twisted to see Galronus standing tall and proud, steady as a rock, and an irritatingly healthy colour for a member of a land-locked tribe.
The big Gaul gestured for Faleria and she laid her hand on the bulging muscles of his forearm, allowing him to escort her across the slippery deck to where the plank was being slid out to the dock. Two of the sailors nearby chuckled as Fronto mirrored the chivalrous act, reaching out and grasping Lucilia’s forearm to steady himself as he weakly staggered across the deck to the plank, moving like a man twenty years his senior.
Lucilia grinned at him as she helped him onto the plank, and watched with glee as he skittered down it and narrowly avoided collapsing onto the quay.
The four of them recovered their land gait quickly, stamping their feet and walking back and forth, and then made their way along the quay toward the five soldiers in crisp uniform. Fronto couldn’t help but issue a groan as he saw the trireme drawing closer along the Tiber from the direction of Rome.
“It’s here already!”
Faleria smiled and patted him on the arm.
“Don’t worry, dear brother. We stay in Ostia tonight and sail with the morning tide. Save your retching for tomorrow.”
The five officers had begun to move. Fronto had assumed they were waiting to board a ship, but it appeared that, in fact, they had recently alighted in much the same fashion as his own party and were making for accommodation in the town.
Both groups converged on the main street leading to the forum and the heart of the town: a narrow thoroughfare compared with the great streets at the centre of Rome. At the entrance of the street, a one-legged veteran stood by the corner, supported on a crude crutch, proffering a wooden bowl for spare coins. Opposite him, a bony, raddled woman with a very visible ribcage touted her wears through a gauzy white garment. Even the poorer classes funnelled into the centre to avoid being accosted by either.
“What are you doing?” Lucilia frowned as Fronto picked up a sudden burst of speed and made for the street, dragging his companions with him.
“I’ve stayed in Ostia. There’s only a limited supply of insect-free beds. I’m not losing out to two traitorous centurions, two ostriches and a man who’s left his chin behind. Come on.”
Unable to hold their friend back, the other three hurried along in Fronto’s wake, converging with the people of Ostia and the small group of soldiers as they made for the street entrance.
Suddenly, almost as if choreographed, the general population opened up and made a space around the mouth of the street. Men in senior military uniform had a way of opening such spaces, regardless of their true value. The only people who failed to melt out of the way were the crippled soldier, whose uniped nature made it difficult, and the whore, who saw an opportunity and bared her chest at them, grinning with all nine teeth.
And Fronto.
Into the sudden open space, Fronto almost dragged Lucilia, with Galronus and Faleria at his heel.
“Hold!” called a reedy voice high enough to be a woman, but that issued from the mouth above the receding chin. Fronto was so taken aback by the voice that he actually stumbled to a halt, blocking the access to the street, Galronus ambling to a stop next to him.
The two bristly centurions who had been behind the senior officers came round the side, slapping their vine staves meaningfully against their greaves.
“In thivilithed thothiety, peathenth and barbarianth thtep out of the way of their theniorth!” snapped chinless in a feminine register.
Fronto grinned and opened his mouth, a thousand insults fighting for prominence on his tongue, but no sound made it out, thanks to a breath-stealing rabbit-punch to the kidney from Galronus.
“Ahem…” said a high, calm voice, with a hint of smugness. Fronto recovered quickly, straightening with a glare at Galronus, to see Menenius step forward to address Chinless.
“With respect, my lord, the ‘barbarian’ is one of your blessed uncle’s senior cavalry commanders and the…” the tribune smiled unpleasantly “… the one that looks like a vagrant would be Marcus Falerius Fronto, staff officer and current commander of the Tenth Equestrian Legion.”
The junior tribune’s faultless moment was ruined slightly as he finished his words with a girlish titter that he tried to hide behind his hand, failing dismally. Fronto frowned, but noticed with some satisfaction the two centurions straighten, their staves dropping to their sides.
“His uncle?” Fronto said, narrowing his eyes.
“Of course, Fronto, you overgrown poppet” said the other junior tribune in a squeaky tone. “This is Publius Pinarius Posca, the son of Julia the elder, nephew of the general. He comes to take a tribunate in Gaul.”
Fronto sighed as the chinless one opened his mouth again.
“Are you thure thath who he ith? He lookth half dead, and dretheth like a… I don’t know. I’ve never theen anyone drethed like that.”
Menenius smiled. “And the ladies, I fancy, would be the lovely sister of master Fronto, and his paramour?”
Fronto’s sour look turned on the speaker before returning to Galronus and the girls.
“Come on. This is making me feel sicker than the ship.”