Roma Eterna

  Lucilla and Adriana remain close by my side throughout the ordeal, and I am grateful for that also.

  These people think of me as a new toy, I realize. The novelty of the hour, to be examined in fascination for a little while and then discarded.

  The wind off the bay has turned chilly with the coming of evening, and somehow, almost imperceptibly, the gathering has moved indoors and upstairs, to a huge room overlooking the atrium that will apparently be our banqueting hall.

  “Come,” Adriana says. “You must meet Uncle Cassio.”

  The famous general is far across the room, standing with arms folded, listening with no show of emotion while his brother and another man carry on what seems to be a fierce argument. He wears a tightly cut khaki uniform and his breast is bedecked with medals and ribbons. The other man, I remember after a moment, is the Count of Pausylipon, whom Frontinus had so casually referred to as “Enrico Giunio.” He is gaunt, tall—nearly as tall as I am—hawk-faced, animated: his expression seems close to apoplectic. Marcello Domiziano is just as excited, neck straining upward, face pushed close to the other’s, arms pinwheeling in emphatic gesticulations. I get the sense that these two have been bitterly snarling and snapping at each other over some great political issue for years.

  They are speaking, I gather, of nothing less than the destiny of Roma itself. The Count of Pausylipon appears to be arguing that it is of the highest importance that the Empire should continue to survive as a single political entity—something that I did not think anyone seriously doubted, now that Reunification had been accomplished. “There’s a reason why Roma has lasted so long,” the Count was saying. “It’s not just about power—the power of one city over an entire continent. It’s about stability, coherence, the supremacy of a system that values logic, efficiency, superb engineering, planning. The world is the better for our having ruled it so long. We have brought light where only the darkness of barbarism would have existed otherwise.”

  These did not seem to me like controversial propositions. But I could see by the expression on the florid face of Marcello Domiziano and his obvious impatience to respond that there must be some area of strong disagreement between the two men, not in any way apparent to me. And Adriana, leaning close to me as she leads me across the room, whispers something that amidst all the noise I am unable clearly to make out, but which obscures what Marcello Domiziano has just said to the Count.

  Despite all the furor going on at his elbow, it appears almost as though the famous general is asleep on his feet—a knack that must be useful during lulls in long battles—except that every few moments, in response, I suppose, to some provocative remark by one combatant or the other, his eyelids widen and a brilliant, baleful glare is emitted by those remarkable coal-bright eyes. I feel hesitant at joining this peculiar little group. But Adriana steers me over to them.

  Frontinus cries, “Yes, yes, Cymbelin! Come meet my brother!” He has noticed my hesitation also. But perhaps he would welcome an interruption of the hostilities.

  Which I provide. The dispute, the discussion, whatever it is, evaporates the moment I get there, turning into polite vaporous chitchat. The Count, having calmed himself totally, an impressive display of patrician self-control, offers me a lofty, remote nod of acknowledgment, gives Adriana and Lucilla a pat on the shoulder apiece, and excuses himself to go in search of a fresh drink. Frontinus, still a little red in the face but cheerful as ever, commends me to his brother’s attention with an upturned palm. “Our British friend,” he says.

  “I am honored, your Excellence,” I say, making a little bow to Cassius Lucius Frontinus.

  “Oh, none of that, now,” says Uncle Cassio. “We aren’t in the camp.” He speaks in Latin. His voice is thin and hard, like the edge of a knife, but I sense that he’s trying to be genial.

  For a moment I am giddy with awe, simply at finding myself in his presence. I think of this little man—and that is what he is, little, as short as his brother and very much slighter of build—striding untiringly from Dacia to Gallia and back in seven-league boots, putting out the fires of secession everywhere. The indomitable general, the savior of the Empire.

  There will be fire of a different sort ablaze in the Empire soon, and I am standing very close to its source. But I have no awareness of that just yet.

  Cassius Frontinus surveys me as though measuring me for a uniform. “Tell me, are all you Britons that big?”

  “I’m a bit larger than average, actually.”

  “A good thing. We came very close to invading you, you know, very early in the war. It wouldn’t have been any picnic, facing a whole army of men your size.”

  “Invading Britannia, sir?” Lucilla asks.

  “Indeed,” he says, giving the girl a quick chilly smile. “A preemptive strike, when we thought Britannia might be toying with joining the rebellion.”

  I blink at him in surprise and some irritation. This is a sore place for us: why is he rubbing it?

  Staunchly I say, “That would never have happened, sir. We are Loyalists, you know, we Britons.”

  “Yes. Yes, of course you are. But the risk was there, after all. A fifty-fifty chance is the way it seemed to us then. It was a touchy moment. And the High Command thought, let’s send a few legions over there, just to keep them in line. Before your time, I suppose.”

  I’m still holding my goblet of wine, still untasted. Now, nervously, I take a deep draught.

  Against all propriety I feel impelled to defend my race. With preposterous stiffness I say, “Let me assure you, general, that I am not as young as you may think, and I can tell you that there was never the slightest possibility that Britannia would have gone over to the rebels. None.”

  A flicker of—amusement?—annoyance?—in those terrible eyes, now.

  “In hindsight, yes, certainly. But it looked quite otherwise to us, for a while, there at the very beginning. Just how old were you when the war broke out, my lad?”

  I hate being patronized. I let him see my anger.

  “Seventeen, sir. I served in the Twelfth Britannic Legion, under Aelius Titianus Rigisamus. Saw action in Gallia and Lusitania. The Balloon Corps.”

  “Ah.” He isn’t expecting that. “Well, then. I’ve misjudged you.”

  “My entire nation, I would say. Whatever rumors of British disloyalty you may have heard in that very confused time were nothing but enemy fabrications.”

  “Ah, indeed,” says the general. “Indeed.” His tone is benign, but his eyes are brighter and stonier than ever and his jaws barely move as he says the words.

  Adriana Frontina, looking horrified at the growing heat of our exchanges, is frantically signaling me with her eyes to get off the subject. Her red-haired friend Lucilla, though, merely seems amused by the little altercation. Marcellus Frontinus has turned aside, probably not coincidentally, and is calling instructions to some servants about getting the banquet under way.

  I plunge recklessly onward, nonetheless. “Sir, we Britons are just as Roman as anyone in the Empire. Or do you think we still nurse private national grievances going back to the time of Claudius?”

  Cassius Frontinus is silent a moment, studying me with some care.

  “Yes,” he says, finally. “Yes, I do, as a matter of fact. But that’s beside the point. Everybody who got swept up into the Empire once upon a time and never was able to find their way out again has old grievances buried somewhere, no matter how Roman they claim to be now. The Teutons, the Britons, the Hispaniards, the Frogs, everyone. That’s why we’ve had two nasty breakups of the system in less than a century, wouldn’t you say? But no, boy, I didn’t mean to impugn the loyalty of your people, not in the slightest. This has all been highly unfortunate. A thousand pardons, my friend.”

  He glances at my goblet, which I have somehow drained without noticing.

  “You need another drink, is that not so? And so do I.” He snaps his fingers at a passing servitor. “Boy! Boy! More wine, over here!”

  I have a c
ertain sense that my conversation with the great war hero Cassius Lucius Frontinus has not been a success, and that this might be a good moment to withdraw. I shoot a helpless glance at Adriana, who understands at once and says, “But Cymbelin has taken enough of your time, Uncle. And look, the praefectus urbi has arrived: we really must introduce our guest to him.”

  Yes. They really must, before I make a worse botch of things. I bow again and excuse myself, and Adriana takes me by one arm and Lucilla seizes the other, and they sweep me away off to the opposite side of the great hall.

  “Was I very horrid?” I ask.

  “Uncle likes men who show some spirit,” Adriana says. “In the army nobody dares talk back to him at all.”

  “But to be so rude—he the great man that he is, and I just a visitor from the provinces—”

  “He was the one that was rude,” says Lucilla hotly. “Calling your people traitors to the Empire! How could he have said any such thing!” And then, in a lower voice, purring directly into my ear: “I’ll take you to Pompeii tomorrow. It won’t be nearly so boring for you there.”

  She calls for me at the hotel after breakfast, riding in an extraordinarily grand quadriga, mahogany-trimmed and silk-tasseled and gilded all over, drawn by two magnificent white horses and two gigantic duns. It makes the one that Marcellus Frontinus sent for me the night before seem almost shabby. I had compared that one to the chariot of an Emperor; but no, I was altogether wrong: surely this is closer to the real thing.

  “Is this what you traveled down in from Roma?” I ask her.

  “Oh, no, I came by train. I borrowed the chariot from Druso Tiberio. He goes in for things of this sort.”

  At the party I had had only the briefest of encounters with young Frontinus and was highly unimpressed with him: a soft young man, pomaded and perfumed, three or four golden rings on each hand, languid movements and delicate yawns, distinctly a prince. Shamelessly exchanging melting glances all evening long with his handsome friend Ezio, who seemed as stupid as a gladiator and probably once was one.

  “What can a quadriga like this cost?” I ask. “Five million sesterces? Ten million?”

  “Very likely even more.”

  “And he simply lends it to you for the day?”

  “Oh, it’s only his second best one, wouldn’t you know? Druso’s a rich man’s son, after all, very spoiled. Marcello doesn’t deny him a thing. I think it’s terrible, of course.”

  “Yes,” I say. “Dreadful.”

  If Lucilla picks up the irony in my voice, she gives no sign of it.

  “And yet, if he’s willing to lend one of his pretty chariots to his sister’s friend for a day or two—”

  “Why not take it, eh?”

  “Why not indeed.”

  And so off we go down the coast road together, this lovely voluptuous red-haired stranger from Roma and I, riding toward Pompeii in a quadriga that would have brought a blush to the cheek of a Caesar. Traffic parts for us on the highway as though it is the chariot of a Caesar, and the horses streak eastward and then southward with the swiftness of the steeds of Apollo, clipclopping along the wide, beautifully paved road at a startling pace.

  Lucilla and I sit chastely far apart, like the well-bred young people that we are, chatting pleasantly but impersonally about the party.

  “What was all that about,” she says, “the quarrel that you and Adriana’s uncle were having last night?”

  “It wasn’t a quarrel. It was—an unpleasantness.”

  “Whatever. Something about the Roman army invading Britannia to make sure you people stayed on our side in the war. I know so little about these things. You weren’t really going to secede, were you?”

  We have been speaking Roman, but if we are going to have this discussion I must use a language in which I feel more at home. So I switch to Latin and say, “Actually, I think it was a pretty close thing, though it was cruel of him to say so. Or simply boorish.”

  “Military men. They have no manners.”

  “It surprised me all the same. To fling it in my face like that—!”

  “So it was true?”

  “I was only a boy when it was happening, you understand. But yes, I know there was a substantial anti-Imperial faction in Londin fifteen or twenty years ago.”

  “Who wanted to restore the Republic, you mean?”

  “Who wanted to pull out of the Empire,” I say. “And elect a king of our own blood. If such a thing as our own blood can be said still to exist in any significant way among Britons, after eighteen hundred years as Roman citizens.”

  “I see. So they wanted an independent Britannia.”

  “They saw a chance for it. This was only about twenty years after the Empire had finished cleaning up the effects of the first collapse, you know. And then suddenly a second civil war seemed likely to begin.”

  “That was in the East, wasn’t it?”

  I wonder how much she really knows about these matters. More than she is letting on, I suspect. But I have come down from Cantabrigia with honors in history, after all, and I suppose she is trying to give me a chance to be impressive.

  “In Syria and Persia, yes, and the back end of India. Just a little frontier rebellion, not even white people that were stirring up the fuss: ten legions could have put the whole thing down. But the Emperor Laureolus was already old and sick—senile, in fact—and no one in the administration was paying attention to the outer provinces, and the legions weren’t sent in until it was too late. So there was a real mess to deal with, all of a sudden. And right in the middle of that, Hispania and Gallia and even silly little Lusitania decided to secede from the Empire again, too. So it was 2563 all over again, a second collapse even more serious than the first one.”

  “And Britannia was going to pull out also, this time.”

  “That was what the rabble was urging, at any rate. There were some noisy demonstrations in Londin, and posters went up outside the proconsul’s palace telling him to go back to Roma, things like that: ‘Britannia for the Britons!’ Throw the Romans out and bring back the old Celtic monarchy, is what people were yelling. Well, of course, we couldn’t have that, and we shut them up very quickly indeed, and when the war began and our moment came, we fought as bravely as any Romans anywhere.”

  “‘We?’” she says.

  “The decent people of Britannia. The intelligent people.”

  “The propertied people, you mean?”

  “Well, of course. We understood how much there was to lose—not just for us, for everyone in Britannia—if the Empire should fall. What’s our best market? Italia! And if Britannia, Gallia, Hispania, and Lusitania managed to secede, Italia would lose its access to the sea. It would be locked up in the middle of Europa with one set of enemies blocking the land route to the east and the other set closing off the ocean to the west. The heart of the Empire would wither. We Britons would have no one to sell our goods to, unless we started shipping them westward to Nova Roma and trying to peddle them to the redskins. The breakup of the Empire would cause a worldwide depression—famine, civil strife, absolute horror everywhere. The worst of the suffering would have fallen on the people who were yelling loudest for secession.”

  She gives me an odd look.

  “Your own family claims royal Celtic blood, and you have a fancy Celtic name. So it would seem that your people like to look back nostalgically to the golden days of British freedom before the Roman conquest. But even so you helped to put down the secessionist movement in your province.”

  Is she mocking me too? I am so little at ease among these Romans.

  A trifle woodenly I say, “Not I, personally. I was still only a boy when the anti-Imperial demonstrations were going on. But yes, for all his love of Celtic lore my father has always believed that we had to put the interests of Roman civilization in general ahead of our petty little nationalistic pride. When the war did reach us, Britannia was on the Loyalist side, thanks in good measure to him. And as soon as I was old enough, I joined
the legions and did my part for the Empire.”

  “You love the Emperor, then?”

  “I love the Empire. I believe the Empire is a necessity. As for this particular Emperor that we have now—” I hesitate. I should be careful here. “We have had more capable ones, I suppose.”

  Lucilla laughs. “My father thinks that Maxentius is an utter idiot!”

  “Actually, so does mine. Well, but Emperors come and go, and some are better than others. What’s important is the survival of the Empire. And for every Nero, there’s a Vespasianus, sooner or later. For every Caracalla, there’s a Titus Gallius. And for every weak and silly Maxentius—”

  “Shh,” Lucilla says, pointing to our coachman then to her ears. “We ought to be more cautious. Perhaps we’re saying too much that’s indiscreet, love. We don’t want to do that.”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Doing something indiscreet, now—”

  “Ah. That’s different.”

  “Very different,” she says. And we both laugh.

  We are passing virtually under the shadow of great Vesuvius now. Imperceptibly we have moved closer to each other while talking, and gradually I have come to feel the pressure of her warm thigh against mine.

  Now, as the chariot takes a sharp turn of the road, she is thrown against me. Ostensibly to steady her, I slip my arm around her shoulders and she nestles her head in the hollow of my neck. My hand comes to rest on the firm globe of her breast. She lets it remain there.

  We reach the ruins of Pompeii in time for a late lunch at a luxurious hostelry just at the edge of the excavation zone. Over a meal of grilled fish and glittering white wine we make no pretense of hiding our hunger for one another. I am tempted to suggest that we skip the archaeology and go straight to our room.