Of Merchants & Heros (13 page)

He was slouching against one of the columns, half concealed. Just as before, he was watching Menexenos with all his attention. He had not seen me.

Before he had departed for Rome, I had run into him once or twice at the praetor’s residence. We had been civil to each other, but he had not mentioned the night of Titus’s banquet, either to apologize or for any other reason.

There are men, it is true, whose greatness of soul causes them to forget petty disagreements, or affect to. Yet I do not think Lucius was such a man. I think he felt he had done nothing to apologize for.

Either that, or he simply did not remember. Certainly he had been drunk enough.

Either way, I had enough sense to know it would be best if he did not see me at the palaistra as Menexenos’s friend. I stepped back under the deep shade of the walkway.

Beside the running-track the trainer had finished whatever it was he was saying. The youths around him began to drift off towards the bath-house.

As soon as the trainer was gone, Lucius made his move.

Eumastas was talking to Menexenos. I saw his head go up. Then Menexenos turned.

Lucius, who normally walked around with an expression of aggressive sullenness on his face, was attempting to smile. It showed as a nervous, alarming grimace. It was clear, even from where I stood, that he was very tense. Then I noticed that he was clutching something in his hand, some sort of leather pouch. He went up to Menexenos, spoke a few words, then held it up, proffering it.

Menexenos glanced at this thing, and then at Lucius’s flushed uneasy face. He said something, and then Lucius began fiddling hurriedly with the cord that held the pouch closed, and from it he pulled a pretty silver strigil, and a small pear-shaped flask of oil, tied at the neck with a white ribbon.

I saw Eumastas’s brows go up. Menexenos spoke, made a polite gesture with his hand, and then, when Lucius answered, he shook his head. He made to turn, but suddenly Lucius caught him back by the arm.

I do not think, to tell the truth, he had intended to snatch at him.

But his uneasiness must have made him clumsy.

Menexenos turned, his expression hardening. He spoke again and shook his head; then he turned away, and he and Eumastas strode off towards the bath-house, leaving Lucius standing on the grass beside the track, pathetically holding the strigil and flask in his hand.

I saw no more. People were beginning to stare, and this was not a scene I wanted Lucius to know I had witnessed. But a little later, when he had washed and dressed, Menexenos came to me in the gardens, to the place we had appointed. His flint eyes looked troubled. But it was Eumastas who said, ‘Your Roman friend was here again. I thought he had gone away.’

I said, ‘He did. He was in Rome.’

‘Well now he’s back.’

Menexenos turned. ‘Leave it, Eumastas. I told you, he is of no importance. Let us forget it.’

Though I had grown up in Praeneste, I was not wholly na ve. I had eyes to see, and I knew that Lucius was not the only suitor in the palaistra. There was a certain ritual to it, and often it was done with style and grace. I had noticed for myself how, in the courts and walkways, beside the running-track, or the wrestling-ground, or the pool, men would stand and watch, seemingly with nothing better to do. There were always lectures going on, and music classes, and games of different sorts; and with all this activity there was a constant traffic of people.

But these men did not come to play, or to be with their friends, or to improve themselves. They came for no other purpose than to gaze upon the naked youths.

I had at first been taken aback by this. But in time I perceived that the young men, stripped for exercise, took no notice, and I began to understand that it was of no concern to them if others chose to look at their bodies. They were what they were, as God had made them, and that was that.

Besides, there was something else I had begun to understand. Not all the onlookers were unwelcome. Some of the youths had lovers, and were pleased when they came to support them. But these men behaved with honour. Never before had I seen anyone there accost a youth in front of his friends and try to press a costly gift on him.

Little wonder Menexenos had not wished to speak of it. It would be thought shameful, and people would suppose Lucius had been given encouragement.

I had wondered, too, about Eumastas. I had seen how, when he watched his friend on the track, his stolid features would soften into a rugged beauty, and his dark eyes shine with tenderness. Whether they were lovers or not I could not tell. They were both well bred, with an aristocratic formality, and, whatever they felt for each other, such people did not make a show of their emotions in public.

There was something else too, that lay behind all the rest. I can say it now.

Like sunlight breaking through mist, my own clouded feelings had started to resolve. No one with eyes to see cannot be touched by beauty; and beauty changes us, like the purifying fire. I was drawn to Menexenos, with a need I only half understood, and it made me uneasy. He had a poise and confidence I lacked; he seemed self- contained, entire, perfect; like light, or the memory of childhood. I grew conscious of his expressions, his movements, his very smell.

But what moved me most was what was deepest. Sometimes, when he thought no one was looking, I would see it in his face, like a cloud passing over water, a profound melancholy, kept in check, hidden from public view, that melted my heart and touched my soul.

All my life, I had never thought of myself as handsome. I had been a slight boy when I was young; after my father’s death, when I had driven myself hard, I had broadened and gained muscle, and took on the appearance of a man. But there was always the darkness within. The sword-wound in my thigh, which Caecilius never ceased to remind me of, seemed to me a mark of all my imperfection. It confronted me every time I stripped, reminding me of my ugliness.

I knew I was not like other men. I was alone. Not one day went by that I did not remember my vow to the god, and the murderous purpose I had given myself. At night, as I lay in my bed, I would whisper to the darkness, ‘Dikaiarchos, you cannot hide; I am coming for you.’ My promise of vengeance lay behind every waking moment, and haunted my dreams. It gave meaning to my solitude.

My only respite from this was when I was with Menexenos. I glimpsed, in some inexplicable way I could not fully grasp, a light that led out of the pathless dark, a chink of sunlight beyond the cave.

It made me yearn to be more than I was; but if anyone had asked me what, I could not have told him.

Yet I sensed it as clearly as the day. And to see Lucius make a fool of himself troubled me deeply, not for his sake, but for my own.

For I had an inkling that, but for my pride, and my sense of dignity, and my wanting Menexenos to respect me, I was capable of just the same. It sent a cold trail of fear down my spine, as when a man stares into an abyss. I yearned to be whole; I knew I was not. I yearned for Menexenos.

All these thoughts I kept to myself. I had no words to express them, even had I dared.

And thus matters stood, when, one day soon after, when Menexenos, Eumastas and I had gone swimming in the bay, he suggested I should train with them at the palaistra.

The summer heat had recently come on. The hillsides were loud with the sound of cicadas. We were basking on a flat, warm rock beside the water, drying off in the afternoon sun. Menexenos, looking at my body, said, ‘You know, Marcus, you are no weakling, and yet I never see you train.’

I told him, somewhat shyly, how I had worked on the land at home.

‘But what of athletics? Is there no gymnasion at Praeneste then?’

I laughed out loud, thinking how shocked the simple townsfolk at home would be at such a thing. ‘No,’ I said. ‘There is nothing like that.’

‘Then why not come with me and Eumastas?’ he said. ‘We can do some diskos and javelin and perhaps some running too. But we can start with the diskos, eh Eumastas—? But Marcus, why are you frowning?’

‘But Menexenos,’ I cried, ‘I am a Roman!’

‘What of it? You are in Tarentum now; and, Roman or not, you are still a man.’

I thought of what Caecilius would have to say if he knew, and smiled inwardly. ‘Then yes,’ I said. ‘Why not?’

There is movement in the diskos-thrower which, when it is done at its best, combines purpose with grace, like the dance of a warrior, or the flight of an eagle. Menexenos was a master of it, so much so that other youths at the palaistra would pause and watch, and the trainer, if he was around, would lean on his staff and say to the younger boys, ‘Observe, and learn.’

He was also a good teacher: calm and patient and exacting. When he taught me, as with everything else he did, his whole mind was on it. I wish I could have said the same for myself.

He would stand close, turning my shoulders and guiding my left leg into position with his foot. ‘No, like this, just as I showed you,’ he would say, placing his hand over mine, and forming my fingers around the rim of the disk.

Close up, he smelled of sweet male sweat, and pine and dust and oil; and where our flesh touched I could feel the heat of his body like the touch of fire.

‘Now swing your arm back, here, like this . . . You’re not concentrating, Marcus! Well, no matter. Let’s try again.’

And we would try again.

FIVE

‘HE IS A DANGEROUS PIRATE,
raiding and plundering the cities of the Aegean, and Lucius says . . .’ Titus broke off. It took me a moment to realize.

I had been looking out of the window into the garden as he talked, my eyes on the fronds of the pear tree; but my mind was elsewhere, ranging along the cliff paths on the wild coast of Epeiros.

He had been talking about Dikaiarchos.

He said, ‘You look as if you have seen some underworld spirit.’

And that was how it felt. But I said, ‘Forgive me, Titus. I was remembering.’

‘Well,’ he went on, ‘he is playing a dangerous game. King Philip thinks we are too exhausted by war, and too afraid of another, to heed what he does. He is backing every pirate from here to Asia. And he is rearming, building another fleet, in secret. But one cannot spend money like that and not have it known.’

‘Yet surely,’ I said, pulling my mind together and forcing myself to concentrate once more on the conversation, ‘he would not dare cross to Italy. He knows what happened to Pyrrhus.’

‘Pyrrhus was defeated, but only by a whisker. It was a close thing then; and this time Scipio has taken the flower of our army to Africa.

Philip knows that. What better time to strike?’

Mimas, Titus’s Greek friend, who was there, said, ‘Would he be so brazen? Does he suppose the Greek cities here would back him?’

Titus shrugged. ‘He may not care, if he is strong enough. The trouble is, no one can predict him. If he means us no harm, why is he being so careful to hide his intentions? Some say he is building this fleet to attack Antiochos in Asia. Philip, meanwhile, declares that he is Antiochos’s friend.’

‘He claims he is everybody’s friend, when it suits him,’ said Mimas.

‘Exactly. And if he is everybody’s friend, why does he need a fleet so urgently?’ He made a frustrated gesture. ‘And then there is Egypt —‘ That year King Ptolemy of Egypt had died. His son, also called Ptolemy, was still a child, and in the chaos of the succession there had been rebellion in Upper Egypt. ‘Perhaps,’ said Titus, ‘he has his eyes on Egypt. If it fell into his hands, he would have Antiochos like this’ – he pressed his thumb and forefinger in a pincer – ‘and he would control the grain trade from Alexandria as well.’

Mimas whistled through his teeth. ‘What do your friends in Rome say?’

‘They say do one thing at a time: let us deal with Hannibal first.’

‘Do you agree?’

‘Up to a point. But we must watch Philip. Whatever he is up to, it will not be to Rome’s benefit. He is waiting to see if we have the stomach to stand up to him.’

My stepfather had asked me to find out what was afoot in Greece.

Now, when I told him what I had heard, he was impatient with me, for it was not what he wanted to hear.

‘Oh, Titus is talking nonsense,’ he said, dismissing my words.

‘There is no threat from Philip.’

Like many middle-aged men, he had ceased to challenge himself years ago. He had grown complacent in his views, and because he surrounded himself with men who dared not contradict him, he had come to believe he was right in everything. He saw only what he wanted to see, and just now he did not want anything to disrupt a trade deal he was working towards with his new contacts in Greece, importing silk from Kos and Syria, and glassware from Phoenicia.

Lately, too, he had begun to collect valuables, having been told by one of his merchant friends that there would soon be money to be made in it, especially in Rome, where there was growing interest in such things. So he instructed his agents in the East to pick up what they could, from cities impoverished by war or want, and send them with his regular cargoes, without enquiring too deeply into their provenance. He would show them to me when they arrived, and indeed they were fine work. I recall a cup of banded sardonyx embossed in white, of a young man holding two horses; an embossed glass bowl from Egypt, with a tint of green, which looked like deep sea-water when the sun caught it; Adonis surrounded by hovering cupids, with the mourning Aphrodite beside him in a bower of flowers. This last – which struck me as voluptuous and overripe – he particularly liked, and kept for himself. The rest he put away, intending to sell them later.