Fronto shook his head and collapsed onto the side of the bed, looking back and forth between the two.
‘When?’
‘Three days now. A shame you were not a few days early, though in truth I was not expecting you until the winter. The campaigning season is still in progress?’
Fronto waved it aside as meaningless. ‘Just some menial things to sort out. I’ve got the Tenth again, but not ‘til spring.
‘That’s good. Faleria is intending to seal matters with Galronus before next year, so they might have time over the winter. I assume he travelled with you?’
Fronto simply nodded. Young Marcus suddenly let out a squeak that sounded agonising and the stunned father leapt to his feet in a panic.
‘Calm, dear. It’s just wind.’
As Lucilia reached down gently for the distressed infant, the boy flapped his small, chubby arms and rapped his knuckles on the basket side, raising a new cry. Lucilia kissed the hand as she picked up the baby and smiled at Fronto. ‘He is so definitely your son. Accident prone to the limit. We shall have to watch this one. If he follows his father too closely, he will discover the wine cellar as soon as he can walk.’
Fronto simply stared as Lucilia rubbed the child until it issued a reverberating belch and settled with a comfortable smile.
Just when he thought he was getting the hang of things life, as usual, threw at him something new to experience. He shook his head and tried to back away as Lucilia proffered the baby, but she was insistent, moving his arms for him until she could slip the small bundle into them.
His jaw firmed as he looked down at his eldest son and he felt a resolution he’d never experienced before. That eagle would not fall. The building would stand and the fire be extinguished and to Hades with prophecy. His sons would grow up to live in a Rome of peace and security.
Smiling down at Marcus and with a warmth beginning to infuse his chilled body, Fronto made his vow silently, beneath his breath. To Fortuna and Nemesis both. He would move the heavens if he had to, but he would stop the crumbling of the Republic for the sake of his family.
He would do whatever needed to be done.
Epilogue
‘Carry out the sentence!’
The centurion in command turned and saluted Priscus and the camp prefect stepped back and took his seat on the benches along with the other officers. Caesar was conspicuous in his absence. Whether or not he had decided to leave for Aquileia this morning to throw further insult at the Carnutes and the Senones, or whether he truly cared so little to see his will done, Priscus did not know, but Antonius sat in the general’s chair, watching events unfold with a stony face.
The assembly had lasted for two days, and the Remi and the Aedui, apparently eager to display their loyalty to Rome, had delivered up Acco, the chief of the Senones, as the man behind the rebellious attitude of the tribes, and the chief architect of the troubles. The Carnutes and the Senones had almost come to blows with their old friends over the betrayal, but with ten legions breathing down their necks, they checked their weapons, held their peace, and produced the wretched Acco as requested.
The man was terrified. Priscus had in his mind an image of the architects of Gallic revolt. The Ambiorixes and the Vercingetorixes and the Indutiomaruses of the world.
Acco was not one of them.
As he had been led out into the dusty square before the council of his peers and the senior commanders of Rome, he had been slumped, defeated, broken. As Caesar had listed the crimes of which he was accused and summarily pronounced his judgement without even bothering to seek approval from the Gauls, Acco had stood shaking, with wide, frightened eyes, a pool of warm urine growing at his feet.
Rome needed a villain. Priscus understood. And with the major villains gone or unavailable, this poor sod was being raised as a mastermind, but he could not find it in himself to approve of this or to hate the man. He had nodded when Antonius had requested that he be the officer in charge of the execution of Acco. He’d disliked it, but he’d agreed. And after this brief, unpleasant duty, the legions would be sent to their winter quarters — two on the borders of the repeatedly troublesome Treveri, two with the Lingones, where they were within striking distance of much of the Gallic and Belgae lands, and six in Senone territory, close to what was now being perceived to be the heart of the troubles.
But Priscus would not be going with them. With a few centuries of veterans, Priscus would be making for Aedui lands, where he would continue to pull apart the web of deceit and rebellion and learn what he could of Vercingetorix without alerting the man to his suspicions.
The winter looked like being a difficult, if interesting, time for Priscus.
The centurion startled him back into the present, calling out for the legionaries to perform their tasks. Acco was dragged, screaming like a defiant child, to the wooden ‘T’, where his wrists were lashed to the horizontal bar. The soldiers stepped back and the punishment officer walked across the dusty ground, his flagellum gripped tight. As he reached the mark in the dirt, he set his feet in position and let go of the barbed whip’s multiple tips, which fell to the ground and hung there ready, the leather thongs knotted around shards of glass, pottery, bone and iron. It was a brutal weapon. One of the worst ways imaginable to die, and reserved for the worst of criminals.
At the centurion’s whistle, the man pulled back his arm, tensed, and delivered the first blow.
Jagged fragments ripped across the man’s back, tearing flesh from it in chunks, fracturing bones and flaying the man in excruciating agony.
Acco screamed and his cry echoed around the valley and across the silent spectators. Priscus took a deep breath. It would be over soon. He’d seen a few ‘scourgings’ in his time, and even hardy condemned soldiers would be dead by the count of thirty. A weak man like Acco might not make it past a dozen. And in the absence of Caesar’s specific instructions, Antonius had declared that he be scourged to death, rather than the more common practice of stopping near death and then crucifying him for the end. Priscus knew Antonius well enough to know that this was no showing of weakness or compassion, though. It was simple expediency. He wanted the chiefs to watch Acco die and there to be no doubt as to his fate and no potential that he be saved from the cross by rebellious sympathisers.
No. Acco would die in the next dozen strokes.
He watched as a lung was exposed and then shredded with the third blow, and the man’s cries of agony quietened with his inability to draw in enough breath.
Around them, the Gallic council watched. Silent. Angry. Helpless.
* * * * *
Vercingetorix, exiled noble of the Arverni, both master and pawn of druids, pulled the cloak tighter about himself. There was no likelihood of anyone here recognising him, especially at the back and lost among the spectators, surrounded by the equally miscellaneous figures of his men, but there was sense in leaving as little as possible to chance. It seemed that Ambiorix had escaped Roman clutches and fled across the Rhenus to his German friends, and the druids were content with the result, but Vercingetorix’s men had not returned nor sent any word, and his suspicions kept him in a heightened sense of awareness of danger. He would not relax now until Rome was naught but a burning hole in the ground.
It was ironic, really. Here he was, standing watching the death of a poor fool who had — like Ambiorix — tipped his hand too early. He was surrounded by an assembly of the same chieftains who had condemned his own father to death for seeking to unite the tribes of Gaul under him. And the druids who had done nothing to help the father were now doing everything in their power to see that very thing happen to the son. Many of his father’s judges were now pledging their tribes’ swords to his command.