turned quickly to him. ‘They must, if we are ever to crew a ship and take back our ransoms.’
Gaditicus snorted softly, clapping his hand on Julius’ armour.
Julius faltered and stopped. ‘Oh no,’ he whispered. ‘Tell them we’ll catch them up. Quickly!’
Gaditicus gave the order and watched as the double file of Romans marched away along the path. They were quickly out of sight around a bend and Gaditicus turned to Julius enquiringly. He had gone pale and shut his eyes.
‘Is it the sickness again?’ Gaditicus asked.
Julius nodded weakly.
‘Before … the last fit, I tasted metal in my mouth. I can taste it now.’ He hawked and spat, his expression bitter. ‘Don’t tell them. Don’t …’
Gaditicus caught him as he fell and held him down as his body jerked and twisted, his sandals cutting arcs in the undergrowth with the violence of their movement. The biting flies seemed to sense his weakness and swarmed around them. Gaditicus looked around for something to jam between Julius’ teeth, but the cloth they had used on Accipiter was long gone. He wrenched up a heavy leaf and managed to get the fibrous stalk across Julius’ mouth, letting it fall in as the mouth champed. It held and Gaditicus bore down with all his weight until the fit was over.
Finally, Julius was able to sit up and spit out the stalk he’d almost bitten through. He felt as if he had been beaten unconscious. He grimaced as he saw his bladder had released and thumped his fists into the earth in fury, scattering the flies before they darted back at his exposed skin.
‘I thought it was over.’
‘Perhaps that was the last one,’ Gaditicus replied. ‘Head wounds are always complicated. Cabera said it might go on for a while.’
‘Or for the rest of my life. I miss that old man,’ Julius said, his voice bleak. ‘My mother used to have shaking fits. I never really understood what it was like before. It feels like dying.’
‘Can you stand? I don’t want to lose the men, and after your speech they could well march all morning.’
Gaditicus helped the young officer to his feet and watched him take a few deep breaths to steady himself. He wanted to offer words of comfort, but the words didn’t come easily.
‘You will beat this,’ he said. ‘Cabera said you were strong and nothing I’ve seen makes me think differently.’
‘Maybe. Let’s move on, then. I’d like to stay close to the sea, so I can wash.’
‘I could say I told you a joke and you pissed yourself laughing,’ Gaditicus said. Julius chuckled and Gaditicus smiled at him.
‘There, you see. You are stronger than you realise. Alexander the Great had the shaking sickness, they say.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, and Hannibal. It is not the end, just a burden.’
Brutus tried to hide his shock when he saw Aurelia the following morning. She was plaster-white and thin, with a web of wrinkles that had not been there when he’d left for Greece years before.
Tubruk had seen his distress and filled the gaps in the conversation, telling Aurelia the answers to the questions she did not ask. The old gladiator was not sure she even recognised Brutus.
Aurelia’s silence was covered by the laughter of Clodia and Cornelia as they tended Julius’ baby at breakfast. Brutus smiled dutifully at the child and said she looked like her father, though in truth he could see no resemblance to anything human. He felt uncomfortable in the triclinium, aware that these people had formed bonds that excluded him. It was the first time he had ever felt like a stranger in that house and it saddened him.
Tubruk left with Aurelia after she had eaten only a little food and Brutus tried hard to take part in the conversation, telling the women about the blue-skinned tribe he had fought in his first few months with the Bronze Fist in Greece. Clodia laughed when he told them of the savage who had waved his genitals at the Romans, believing he was safe. Cornelia covered Julia’s ears with her hands and Brutus blushed, embarrassed.
‘I’m sorry. I am more used to the company of soldiers. It has been a while since I was in this house.’
‘Tubruk told us you grew up here,’ Clodia broke in to put him at his ease, knowing somehow that it was important she did so. ‘He said you always dreamed of being a great swordsman. Did you reach your dream?’
Shyly, Brutus told them of the sword tourney he had won, against the best of the legion centuries.
‘They gave me a sword made with harder iron that keeps a better edge. It has gold in the hilt. I will show it to you.’
‘Will Julius be safe?’ Cornelia asked without warning.
Brutus responded with a quick smile. ‘Of course. The ransom has been paid. There is no danger for him.’ The words came easily and she seemed reassured. His own worries were untouched.
That afternoon, he walked back up the hill to the oak with Tubruk, each of them carrying axes on their shoulders. They took up positions on each side of the trunk and began the slow rhythm of blows that ate a deeper and deeper gash into the wood as the day wore on.
‘There is another reason for my coming back to Rome,’ Brutus said, wiping sweat from his forehead with his hand.
Tubruk laid down his axe and breathed heavily for a few moments before replying.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘I want to find my mother. I am not a boy any longer and I want to know where I came from. I thought you might know where she was.’
Tubruk blew air out of his lips, taking up the axe again.
‘It will bring you grief, lad.’
‘I must. I have family.’
Tubruk hammered his axe blade into the oak with enormous power, wedging it deeply.
‘Your family is here,’ he said, levering it out.
‘These are my blood. I never knew my father. I just want to know her. If she died without me seeing her, I’d always regret it.’
Tubruk paused again, then sighed before speaking.
‘She has a place in the Via Festus, on the far side of the city, near the Quirinal hill. Think hard before you go there. It could disappoint you.’
‘No. She deserted me when I was only a few months old. Nothing she could do would disappoint me now,’ Brutus said softly, before taking up his axe again and continuing to cut at the old tree.
As the sun set, the oak fell and they walked back to the estate house in the twilight. Renius was there, waiting in the shadow of the gate.
‘They’ve built where my house stood,’ he said angrily to Brutus, ‘and some young legionaries marched me out of the city as a troublemaker. My own city!’
Tubruk
