I had left Hannibal at last. I was on a new road, and this one, unlike Hannibal’s, led to Rome.
Why did he not take Rome? He hardly even tried. So many have asked me. I give the usual answers: lack of siege equipment, of support from Carthage. The truth is that after Cannae he was spent. What he had made in his mind was broken. He had drunk his loss – his father, his son, his wife – to the lees. When that was done, he found that beneath the brilliance and the fury and the anger there was nothing. He found he was only a man.
The road was deserted, reaching on as far as I could see, its far distance shimmering in the sun. Strong and sure, this road’s self-confidence was almost frightening. I sat down on the kerb and drank deep from my water-gourd. I ate some dried figs. I wanted to defecate, but felt exposed, alone. The bowel, unlike the bladder, is a patient friend. I stood up again and walked on.
The first people I met ignored me. They were on a wagon, coming south towards me. Two oxen pulled it, plodding on. A haze of flies buzzed round the beasts. I started to greet them, but their driver stared straight ahead as they passed me. The others, two men and a woman, did the same. The creaking of the wheels was raucous, then again I was alone.
I limped on. I slept that night and others in a culvert, like a fox in his den. Now both my feet were sore from walking on the stones.
Even from my room I heard the banging at the door. Then the noise of voices, people stirring. It was dark and cold. I slipped out of bed and shivered, fumbled for my woollen gown. Still half asleep, I walked into a chair and stumbled as I crossed the room, but I found the door. Torches were blazing in the corridor. I blinked, and rubbed my eyes.
Festo rushed past me, a torch in each hand. I followed, past the Manes and Penates, down the corridor as so often before. There were six men in the atrium, no, seven. Crossing the room in front of them, his hair dishevelled, in a gown, his back to me, his slippers scuffing on the floor, I saw my father. I squeezed against the wall to see round him and gasped – I had never seen blood before.
‘They what!’ my father shouted.
‘I know, it’s outrageous,’ said one of the three men I could see. He and another, younger man were supporting a third, who was slumped but standing, his whole face covered in blood, shining in the torchlight. I could see it ooze, glowing, from a gash across his head. His thick brown hair, there, was black. Who says blood is red? It is, but not for long.
‘Festo, quick. Bandages, hot water. Pomponia, where are the chairs?’ There was a new note to my father’s voice, an urgency I had not heard before.
‘Coming,’ I heard my mother answer, though I couldn’t see her.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ my father replied, crossing the tablinum and pulling over a couch.
‘Lay him down there.’
‘But the blood …’ said the younger man.
‘Bugger the blood,’ my father replied. I’m sure he did. It was the first time I had heard anyone swear.
They laid the man down gently. My father knelt down beside him. Festo approached, and reached out with a dripping cloth.
The man waved him away. ‘Later.’ I could barely hear him. He cleared his throat, spoke more strongly. ‘We’ll do this later. The cut’s not deep. They tended to it on board the ship, but we’ve ridden hard to get here. That’s opened the wound up again. Anyway,’ and he looked up at the elder of the men who had carried him in, ‘it’s not outrageous, Ligurius.’
I saw him turn his head towards my father, reach out a hand and take him by the arm. ‘No, it’s not outrageous. Scipio, it is war.’
What I remember of that night is the dirt. There had been none in my childhood until that night. Everything in our house was always clean and ordered. Everyone’s clothes were always the same, not in colour – on the contrary – but in cleanliness, and that crisp, clean laundry smell is one that I still bear with me from my childhood as if I was still there.
We had a laundry room at the back of the courtyard, its copper vessels gleaming, and a laundry maid – what was her name? Caria? Coria? – always with her hair tied back, her apron white and crisp. I used to hide behind a bench and through the open door watch her working and smell that slightly acid smell.
I have a fine laundry here. Mulca supervises it. Even our bed-linen, of fine Egyptian cotton, is white and crisp and clean. Mulca does not know, but often I stand in a recess in the passage outside the laundry and shut my eyes and smell and dream.
I am finding this a trifle dull. But I must let him have his memories. So I have been doing other things, and will allow myself a brief digression. I can always take it out later, when I edit Scipio’s account.
What I have been doing is renewing my love affair these past few days. My love affair with numbers. In the late afternoons, when Scipio is out on the estate again or reading, I have been checking Macro’s accounts. That would be tedious, even to a practised clerk, but not to me. Payments for fencing and lamp oil, receipts for lambs and corn … I haven’t found a mistake yet, and Macro is fastidious. But he asked me as a friend to check. ‘The older I get, Bostar,’ he said, ‘the more the numbers seem to swim before my eyes in the ledger.’
Not so with me, and I do not use an abacus. I have loved numbers since I was very small. They were and are utterly reliable, true, something I can depend on. Two plus two, everywhere and to everybody, is always four. People, by contrast, as Scipio has just demonstrated by breaking off to talk about his laundry here, of all things, do not behave at all like numbers. They are, on the whole, neither dependable nor independent. I am fortunate indeed to have known both numbers and people. The ideal state, I think, would be one that balanced people and numbers. But most embody the virtues of neither and the vices of both.
Two slaves brought the chairs at last. My father sat down beside the wounded man. ‘So, Flavius, tell me. What happened? Where is Julius?’ I had never heard him so intense.
The man called Flavius sat up a little on one elbow. He coughed, long and hacking. ‘W-water …’
‘Of course. Festo! Get some water. Or wine?’
Flavius shook his head vigorously. ‘We need Mars, not Bacchus tonight, Publius. Let me begin.’
I stood transfixed, just outside the tablinum, surrounded by the images of my ancestors. A great part of what being a Scipio meant had been brought home to me, I realised, as I watched the stain of Flavius’ blood spread across the white linen of the couch where he lay.
‘Our journey at least went well,’ Flavius said, ‘no storms, or pirates.’
‘Though we were faster back than going,’ added the older man, Ligurius.
‘You sailed from Ravenna?’ my father asked.
‘No, from Ancona. We were on our way to Ravenna when we heard that one of Paullus’ ships – you remember him, Scipio?’ – my father nodded – ‘that one of his fast merchant ships was bound for Illyria anyway, out of Ancona.’
Flavius paused,
