Captain of Rome (30 page)

An hour later they lay in the solitude of her bedroom, the sounds of city barely audible through the opened shutters, the noise muted by the heat of the early afternoon. Atticus lay on his back, his eyes tracing the light reflected across the ceiling, his mind casting back to a dawn weeks before at the edge of Thermae and the glare of the sun on the waves. Hadria lay beside him, her finger tracing an imaginary line an inch above the scar on his face, recalling Atticus’s words of moments before when he told her of how he was attacked. Hadria had listened, silently glad that she had taken the lead an hour before when she had led him to her room, the fear resurfaced and so vividly remembered giving her reason to value every moment and she had tempered their mutual anticipation and yearning with a tenderness that Atticus had never known.

Now Atticus lay replete, his mind drifting aimlessly until he suddenly glanced to the door, his brow wrinkling as if in annoyance and he stared at it for a moment longer before turning away.

‘What’s the matter?’ Hadria asked, noticing his expression.

‘I thought I heard someone approaching,’ he said, looking
once more at Hadria. ‘I was expecting a knock, a message from your father’s house that Septimus had returned.’

Hadria nodded and her expression turned serious. ‘I told him about us the last time he was in Rome,’ she said. ‘He was very angry.’

‘I know,’ Atticus replied and he told Hadria of his confrontation with Septimus on the
Aquila.

‘And you haven’t spoken of it since?’ Hadria asked, her tone one of concern.

‘There is nothing more to say,’ Atticus said irritably. ‘Septimus will not change his mind.’

Hadria’s forehead creased as she tried to divine her brother’s inner thoughts. She could not be sure but she still felt her original conviction was sound, that Septimus did not want Hadria to lose another love in battle as she had her first husband. She spoke her thoughts aloud to Atticus, watching as his brow furrowed.

‘That’s why he told me to stay on deck before Tyndaris,’ he said almost to himself, ‘and why he was angry to see me when I went onto the Carthaginian galley to warn him.’

‘What do you mean?’ Hadria asked.

Atticus explained.

‘So he’s trying to protect you…’ Hadria whispered, her words hanging in the air as Atticus remained silent, thinking of his friend. After their confrontation on the
Aquila
he had been sure of Septimus’s position. Now, with Hadria’s insight, he was no longer certain.

The Senate stood as one as Regulus entered the Curia, his preannounced request for a full audience ensuring that every senator of Rome was in attendance, their numbers swelled by tribunes and senior magistrates who had also been summoned at the senior consul’s request. Regulus walked
slowly to the podium, indicating with his hand for the assembly to be seated. He stood silent for a moment; savouring the approbation of the Senate but also the renewed sense of a shared purpose that permeated the Curia, the narrowly averted threat to Rome infusing the Senate with a reunified aspiration that stood above the petty power-plays and squabbling of the daily debate. Regulus had experienced this level of concord before, immediately after the victory of Mylae, when all of Rome rose to its feet in triumph. He was a lowly senator then, anonymous amongst three hundred. Now he was senior consul and the united power of Rome was his to command.

‘My fellow Romans!’ he began, his voice reaching every man in the hushed chamber. ‘We have reached a cross-roads in our fight with the
Punici
of Africa, a moment of truth when decisive action can and must prevail.’

A murmur of agreement rippled across the chamber.

‘As you all know, a Carthaginian plan to invade this very city was exposed,’ Regulus continued, indicating to Varro who stood in the wings, his first time in the Curia since announcing his defeat at Thermae, the tribune now bowing his head in acceptance of the splattering of applause from the Senate, ‘and subsequently thwarted at Tyndaris.’

The Senate clapped again, this time towards the podium but it quickly abated as Regulus raised his hand.

‘It was a bold plan, a decisive plan that, if it had succeeded, would have given the Carthaginians not only unconditional control of Sicily but also a new subservient state in their empire…a state named Rome.’

Many senators reacted with instinctive anger, shouting denial and cursing the Carthaginians who would dare such a thing. Regulus let them vent their antagonism, his eyes instead on those senators who remained silent, those who
had understood the subtext of his words, many of them nodding their heads in pre-emptive approval.

‘I say to you then, Senators of Rome,’ Regulus shouted, overwhelming the cacophony of noise. ‘That we reverse this plan of the enemy, that we take their initiative and infuse it with Roman audacity!’ The Senate began to cheer. ‘With Roman courage!’ Regulus shouted, his voice struggling against the ovation, ‘and with the power of this mighty Republic!’

As one the Senate stood to applaud, the noise reaching a crescendo as Regulus stretched out his arms to encompass the power surging around him.

‘We will take this fight to the shores of Carthage herself!’ he roared, his final words tipping the Senate over into complete support for their leader.

Varro stood proudly beside his father as yet another senator approached to shake his hand. Regulus had finished his speech over an hour before and only now was the Curia beginning to empty, the session extended to allow the senior senators of the chamber to publicly back the consul’s plan, their orations infused with praise for Regulus and Varro and heavy with rhetoric that expounded the ideals of Rome, of how the overthrow of Carthage would bring civilisation to the shores of Africa. They were words that gave every tribune in the chamber cause to imagine their glorious fate in the approaching battle, but none more so that Varro, who saw his success at Tyndaris as only the beginning.

The crowd dissipated quickly and soon Varro’s father drifted off with a group of senior magistrates, grasping his son’s arm lightly as he left, his pride evident in every gesture. Varro walked slowly towards the colonnaded exit, the later afternoon sun creating blocks of light between the pillars through which droning insects traced lazy paths of flight. Varro stood
still for a moment in one of the shafts of light, glancing briefly over his shoulder at the inner chamber and smiling slightly, the white brightness of the sun warm on his face. He turned again and was surprised by a figure standing in his path.

‘Congratulations, Tribune,’ the man said and Varro instantly recognised the voice.

‘Thank you, Senator Scipio,’ he replied and began to walk around him.

Scipio pre-empted the evasion and clasped Varro’s arm, holding it firm. ‘You have done well, Varro,’ he said, a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

Varro shrugged his arm clear, irritated by Scipio’s condescension. ‘I have done what I set out to do,’ he said. ‘Return to Rome with my honour restored.’

‘But what of our agreement?’ Scipio asked, ‘The Greek Perennis still lives.’

‘For now,’ Varro said dismissively, ‘and as for our agreement, it would seem I was mistaken in believing I needed your help.’

Scipio’s face coloured in anger, ‘An agreement made cannot be broken,’ he said, stepping closer until he was but mere inches from Varro’s face, ‘and you owe me.’

‘I owe you nothing, Scipio,’ Varro spat, ‘and your power in the Senate is no more. I will take my revenge on Perennis, but in my own time, and certainly not on your command.’

Scipio was about to retort but Varro brushed past him, walking quickly but confidently away until he was lost from sight. Only then did Scipio’s face contort into an expression of pure rage, his dismissal at the hands of an upstart like Varro striking at the very centre of his pride and honour.

‘So they all believe my power is no more,’ he whispered to himself, his mind summoning the memory of Regulus’s equally vile contempt, the thought fuelling his anger and
hatred. He had raised Regulus from obscurity, rescued Varro from disgrace and both men had turned on him, their success giving them a false sense of invincibility, a belief they could dismiss Scipio and all he had done. But they were wrong, Scipio thought, his face twisting into a malicious smile, and with the patience of a hunter he set his mind to devising a new plan, one that would rid him of his enemies and finally achieve the death of a Greek captain who was at the centre of his hatred.

Atticus wiped the fine mist of sea-spray from his face as he leaned against the forerail of the
Aquila
, his gaze sweeping over the ordered formation of galleys fore and aft, their number stretching the length of the black shoreline of Fiumicino. He looked to the galleys closest to the
Aquila
in the five-abreast formation, triremes all who made up the centre of the line, the prized van—and rear-guard positions all granted to the pre-eminent quinqueremes who accounted for nearly half of the three-hundred strong
Classis Romanus
, a immense fleet that had taken three weeks to assemble.

‘Impressive…’

Atticus turned to find Septimus standing behind him. He was clad in full battle armour, the breastplate newly reshaped, the battle scars removed. Atticus nodded and looked to the fleet once more, a curious sensation in his chest as he repeated Septimus’s description in his mind, the display of Rome’s power mesmeric.

‘Orders from the vanguard, Captain,’ Lucius said, interrupting Atticus’s thoughts again. ‘The fleet is to heave-to at Ostia to allow the flagship and the senatorial galleys to take point.’

‘Very well, Lucius,’ Atticus replied. ‘Inform Gaius and stand by at the helm’. Lucius nodded and walked quickly away.

‘How are the new troops?’ Atticus asked of Septimus, his thoughts now on his own galley.

‘They’re good men,’ Septimus replied, ‘all from VII of the Fifth.’

Atticus nodded, glancing past Septimus to the assembled ranks of his replenished demi-maniple on the main deck.

‘So, our first stop is Brolium?’ Septimus asked, changing the subject.

‘Naples first,’ Atticus replied, ‘to pick up the transport ships that have been assembled there along with the replacement troops for the Ninth. Then we sail for Brolium.’

Septimus nodded, his thoughts straying to Marcus. The devastated Ninth legion had never been called to join the Second in fighting the Carthaginians to the south of Brolium but with the enemy now in full retreat and the replacement troops bringing the Ninth back up to full strength, they were the obvious choice to sail with the invasion fleet.

‘We should be in Brolium in about four days,’ Atticus added. ‘Two days to re-supply and embark the Ninth and then a full week to Agrigentum where the Sixth Legion will board.’

Septimus nodded again, marvelling anew at the scale of the invasion force. Three years before four legions, forty thousand men, had crossed the Strait of Messina to invade Sicily, but that crossing had taken less than an hour over a mere four miles of calm coastal water. Now the invasion was striking at the very heart of the Carthaginian Empire.

A sudden clarion call blasted from the vanguard of the fleet, the sound taken up and amplified until it rippled across the length of the entire formation, the air charged with the blare of a thousand trumpets as the head of the fleet reached the harbour entrance of Ostia. The flagship
Victoria
emerged, flanked by a dozen other quinqueremes, their banners heralding the
family names of the senators on board, over fifty of them in total, many of them junior in rank, eager to associate their names with the impending invasion.

Hamilcar paced incessantly across his room in the naval barracks in Carthage. He had spent all morning with delegates from the one-hundred-and-four, discussing with them the latest rumours arriving in the city from traders interacting with others who had been to Ostia. The rumours were of a gathering fleet, and of Fiumcino’s shipyards’ increased and insatiable appetite for raw materials; pine and oak, canvas and iron; of a brooding tension that was permeating the enemy military.

He strode to the window and looked out over the harbour, subdued in the heat of the mid-day sun. In the military port, and beyond in the commercial harbour, the assembled fleets of the empire remained at anchor, over two hundred galleys, with only the Sicilian fleet still on station in the hostile waters surrounding the contested island. The galleys looked to be sleeping, tugging lazily on their anchor lines as the current shifted beneath them, the energy and anticipation that had infused the crews and commanders when they first arrived in Carthage now lost to apathy and tedium.

Hamilcar was due to stand before the supreme council of Carthage within the hour, to outline his revised plan of campaign now that his proposed invasion was all but impossible. The massive fleet in Carthage’s harbour was a constant strain on the city’s resources, draining the grain warehouses and coffers alike and Hamilcar knew that a majority of the council, led by Hanno, were anxious to return the fleets to their home ports.

The first knock on the door went unnoticed by Hamilcar, engrossed as he was in his thoughts, his eyes having lost their
focus as he stared at the galleys before him. The second knock broke his reverie and he spun around, calling enter as he did. The door opened and Himilco stepped in, the captain’s face animated, his eyes darting to Hamilcar’s desk and then scanning the room until he saw his commander. He walked quickly to him.

‘My lord, I have further news of the Romans,’ he said.

‘Don’t you mean rumours?’ Hamilcar asked dismissively.

‘No, my lord,’ Himilco insisted. ‘There is a Maltese captain outside who you must hear.’

‘Maltese?’ Hamilcar asked, intrigued.

‘Yes, my lord. His ship approached the flagship
Alissar
in the commercial harbour and asked to speak to the commander. Once I heard his report I rushed him here.’

‘Very well,’ Hamilcar said. ‘Show him in.’

Hamilcar studied the captain as Himilco escorted him in. The Maltese was tall but showed none of the bearing of a military man, his eyes alert and intelligent but without the hard determination of one who has seen battle.