‘I wish it had been,’ she said. ‘I really do.’
‘Did you … with Marcus?’
Her eyes widened slightly. Was he truly so innocent that he didn't see the insult?
‘Oh, I would have, of course,’ she replied tartly, ‘but he didn't ask.’
‘I'm sorry,’ he said, blushing, ‘I didn't mean …’
‘Did he say we did?’ Alexandria demanded.
Gaius kept his face straight as he replied: ‘Yes, I'm afraid he boasted about it.’
‘I'll put a dagger in his eye the next time I see him, gods!’ Alexandria raged, gathering her clothes to dress.
Gaius nodded seriously, trying not to smile at the thought of Marcus returning innocently.
They dressed hurriedly, as neither wanted the gossips to see him coming out of her room before the sun was up. She left the slave quarters with him and they sat together in the gardens, brushed by a warm night wind that moved in silence.
‘When can I see you again?’ he said quietly.
She looked away and he thought she wouldn't answer. Fear rose in him.
‘Gaius … I loved every moment of last night: the touch and feel and taste of you. But you will marry a daughter of Rome. Did you know I wasn't Roman? My mother was from Carthage, taken as a child and enslaved, then made into a prostitute. I was born late. I should never have been born so late to her. She was never strong after me.’
‘I love you,’ Gaius said, knowing it was true for at least that moment and hoping that was enough. He wanted to give her something that showed she was more than just a night of pleasure for him.
She shook her head lightly at his words.
‘If you love me, let me stay here in Marius’ home. I can fashion jewellery and one day I will make enough to buy myself free. I can be happy here as I could never be if I let myself love you. I could, but you would be a soldier and leave for distant parts of the world and I would see your wife and your children and have to nod to them in the street. Don't make me your whore, Gaius. I have seen that life and I don't want it. Don't make me sorry for last night. I don't want to be sorry for something so good.'
‘I could free you,’ he whispered, in pain. Nothing seemed to make sense.
Her eyes flashed in anger, quickly controlled. ‘No, you couldn't. Oh, you could take my pride and sign me free by Roman law, but I would have earned it in your bed. I am free where it matters, Gaius. I realise that now. To be a free citizen in law, I must work honestly to buy myself back. Then I am my own. I met a man today who said he had honesty and pride. I have both, Gaius, and I don't want to lose either. I will not forget you. Come and see me in twenty years and I will give you a pendant of gold, fashioned with love.’
‘I will,’ he said. He leaned in and kissed her cheek, then rose and left the scented gardens.
He let himself out onto the streets of the city and walked until he was lost and too tired to feel anything except numbness.
As the moon rose, Marius frowned at the centurion.
‘My orders were clear. Why have you not obeyed them?’
The man stammered a little as he replied: ‘General. I assumed there had been a mistake.’ His face paled as he spoke. He knew the consequences. Soldiers did not send messengers to query their orders, they obeyed them, but what he had been asked was madness.
‘You were told to consider tactics against a Roman legion. Specifically, to find ways to nullify their greater mobility outside the gates. Which part did you not understand?’ Marius' voice was grim and the man paled further as he saw his pension and rank disappearing.
‘I … No one expects Sulla to attack Rome. No one has ever attacked the city –’
Marius interrupted him. ‘You are dismissed to the ranks. Fetch me Octavius, your second-in-command. He will take your place.’
Something crumpled out of the man. More than forty years old, he would never see promotion again.
‘Sir, if they do come, I would like to be in the first rows to meet them.’
‘To redeem yourself?’ Marius asked.
The man nodded, sickly.
‘Granted. Yours will be the first face they see. And they will come, and not as lambs, but wolves.’
Marius watched the broken man walk stiffly away and shook his head. So many found it difficult to believe that Sulla would turn against their beloved city. For Marius it was a certainty. The news he received daily was that Sulla had finally broken the back of the rebel armies under Mithridates, burning a good part of Greece to the ground in the process. Barely a year had passed, and he would be returning as a conquering hero. The people would grant him anything. With such a strong position, there was no chance of him leaving the legion in the field or in a neighbouring city while he and his cronies came quietly back to take their seats in the Senate and go on as usual. This was the gamble Marius had taken. Though there was nothing else he could find to admire about the man, Sulla was a fine general and Marius had known all along that he could win and return.
‘The city is mine now,’ he muttered thickly, looking about him at the soldiers building ramparts onto the heavy gates for arrow fire. He wondered where his nephew had got to and noted absently how little he'd seen of him in the last few weeks. Tiredly, he rubbed the bridge of his nose, knowing he was pushing himself too hard.
He had snatched sleep for a year as he built his supply lines and armed his men and planned the siege to come. Rome had been recreated as a city fortress and there was not a weak point in any of the walls. She would stand, he knew, and Sulla would break himself on the gates.
His centurions were hand-picked and the loss of one that morning was a source of irritation. Each man had been promoted for his flexibility, his ability to react to new situations, ready for this time, when the greatest city in the world would face her own children in battle – and destroy them.
* * *
Gaius was drunk. He stood on the edge of a balcony with a full goblet of wine, trying to steady his vision. A fountain splashed in the garden below and blearily he decided to go and put his head into the water. The night was warm enough.
The noise from the party was a crashing mix of music, laughter and drunken shouting as he moved back inside. It was past midnight and no one was left sober. The walls were lined with flickering oil lamps, casting an intimate light over the revellers. The wine slaves filled every cup as soon as it was drained and had been doing so for hours.
A woman brushed against Gaius and draped an arm over his shoulder, giggling, making him spill some red wine onto the cream marble floor. Her breasts were uncovered and she pulled his free hand onto them as she pressed her lips to him.
He broke for air and she took his wine, emptying the cup in one. Throwing it over her shoulder, she reached down into the folds of his toga, fondling him with erotic skill. He kissed her again and staggered back under her drunken weight until his back pressed up against a column near the balcony. He could feel its coolness against his back.
The crowd were oblivious. Many were only partly dressed and the sunken pool in the middle of the floor churned with slippery couples. The host had brought in a number of slave girls, but the debauchery had spread with the drunkenness and by this late hour the last hundred guests were ready to accept almost anything.
Gaius groaned as the stranger opened her mouth on him and he signalled a passing slave for another cup of wine. He spilled a few drops down his bare chest and watched as the liquid dribbled