Volcatius, Rufio, Caninius, Sextius, Calenus, Reginus, Basilus, Aristius, Silanus. Funny how they spelled such a portentous phrase. Fronto had wondered for a moment whether divine Fortuna had a part in its devising.
For the following quarter of an hour and more, Fronto tried to pick out something memorable about each officer as he ran through his mnemonic, attempting to keep his mind from the motion of the vessel and what remained of his stomach lining on the inside.
Gradually, as he repeated by rote and peered into the spray, he spotted the lights that sharp-eyed Antonius had seen earlier occasionally dipping beneath the waves and then rising into the evening gloom. At least there hadn’t been a storm. The ship’s captain had been convinced a tempest was on the way and had flatly refused to sail until Antonius talked him around with honeyed words and a fat purse.
The journey had been rain free, but the high, cold winds of late winter had turned the sea’s surface into something that resembled a relief map of the Alpes, and the journey had been far from comfortable.
He watched with growing relief as the diffuse orange blooms gradually resolved into distinguishable lights glowing in windows and the shipping beacon on the end of the dock, and slowly the buildings of Ostia began to take shape in the purple blanket of evening. Finally, as the ship bucked ever closer to the city, he began to make out individual figures on the dock and sighed with happiness. Antonius had promised a stop-over of a few nights in Ostia before Caesar’s trireme took them north to Gaul. Apparently the man had business to attend to in Rome before they left, and he would have to meet up with Caesar’s agents to pick up any new information.
As they rounded the breakwater and made for the river and the dock that sat beside it, the waves fell to blessedly low levels and the ship settled, leaving Fronto feeling surprisingly disorientated with its deceptive calm. He gripped the rail as the ship closed on the dock and forced himself to stand upright and look military, rather than preparing to leap over the side onto land in order to kiss the stonework like a long lost lover.
Ostia slid closer and closer until a thump that made Fronto scrabble to maintain his grip on the rail announced that they had docked. The crew of the liburna ran back and forth securing lines and running out a ramp, and Fronto finally let go of the rail and attempted to walk on unstable, wobbling legs towards the plank. The other passengers emerged smiling and laughing from the rear housing and converged on his position, Balbus and the ladies leading the way.
Lucilia gave him what she probably thought was a smile, but put him more in mind of a predator weighing up whether its prey was worth the effort. Faleria had much the same look, but Fronto knew her well enough to recognise she was well aware of her expression and had cultivated it on purpose.
‘Gods,’ he thought to himself in a moment of dreadful realisation and with a wicked smile, ‘I’ve married my sister!’
‘What are you laughing about, chuckles?’ Lucilia asked, raising an eyebrow as they approached the ramp.
‘Nothing. Just making sure I got today’s good mood out of the way before I had it forcibly ripped from me.’
‘Don’t be so over-dramatic Marcus. Sea travel always makes you so cranky.’
‘It would make you ‘cranky’ too if you’d turned inside out once an hour and not eaten in three days.’
‘Well we’re having a stop-over here. Dear Antonius has agreed that we can stay as long as we need to in order to pay our proper respects to mother, on the proviso that Caesar has no urgent demands.’
‘Good. Maybe by the time we put back out to sea I’ll have had sufficient time on land to recover enough to eat a piece of bread. Extra fuel for sickness on the next leg.’
‘Oh do stop complaining and lead us down the ramp.’
Fronto glared at his young wife and turned, stomping angrily down the ramp. She was right, of course. Lucilia was rarely anything but loving and courteous, but sea travel made him tetchy even at the best of times, and the knowledge that her new husband was about to abandon her for months on end and march off to war had done little to raise her spirits.
He forced himself to calm a little. He was being selfish and he knew it. Lucilia was facing her first summer of married life alone — apart from her sister-in-law and father — and even before then they were about to visit the tomb of her recently-deceased mother. He mentally chided himself for not having smiled straight away.
‘Marcus Antonius?’
Fronto blinked as he turned his attention from the beautiful young woman behind and to the source of the voice. On the dock, amid the working sailors and dockers, stood a man in the uniform tunic and cloak of a military officer, though lacking weapons and armour. He was a tall man with a pinched, mouse-like face and a twitching nose. His thinning hair was a strange mix of blond and grey.
‘No,’ Fronto replied. ‘Antonius is back up there.’
Stepping off the ramp and holding out his hand for the ladies to alight, he watched until Antonius appeared at the rail. ‘That’s your man,’ he noted to the tall soldier.
‘Marcus Antonius?’ the man repeated, this time up to the deck.
‘That would be me,’ Antonius replied. Without waiting for the ramp to clear, the somewhat inebriated commander simply stepped up onto the rail and leapt down onto the dock. Fronto stared as the man made a hard landing which probably jarred every bone and organ in his body. A fall like that could have broken his leg!
Antonius grinned, his cheeks flushed. ‘Marcus Antonius, lately cavalry commander for the Proconsul of Syria and now aide to the Proconsul of Gaul.’ He stopped, frowning as his gaze focused on the tall man. The newly arrived officer stepped back suspiciously, his gait reminding Fronto of a crane fly. ‘Hirtius?’ Antonius hazarded.
‘Ah, yes?’ the man replied with a furrowed brow.
‘I was told to watch out for you,’ Antonius smiled. ‘The descriptions I was given are startlingly accurate.’
Hirtius’ frown deepened and Antonius let out another deep laugh. ‘Nothing bad, my friend.’ He turned to Fronto. ‘This, Marcus, is Aulus Hirtius. He’s Caesar’s man, lately of Aquileia.’ He turned back to Hirtius. ‘What brings you out of hiding in the general’s provincial palace, Hirtius?’
The mantis-like man cleared his throat disapprovingly, and took another step back, grimacing. Fronto suspected the wine on Antonius’ breath had been the reason for that particular retreat.
‘I have been summoned to Samarobriva, along with the rest of you, but I was instructed to meet you here and impart further instructions from the general.’
Fronto’s ears pricked at the news.
‘Go on?’ Antonius encouraged the new arrival.
‘You are to dispatch a number of your companions to Cisalpine Gaul. Pompey’s former legion — the First — is quartered at Aquileia, courtesy of an agreement ratified by the senate, and you are to send a man to take command of it and lead it north to Samarobriva at the earliest opportunity. That man will have to be accompanied by a second, who will take command of a fledgling legion — the Fifteenth — which has been levied there and supplied with veteran officers from the surrounding cities. I have horses and a suitable military escort ready to leave with them. They can take the Via Flaminia across country for speed.’
Antonius seemed to take in the surprising news of two new legions without blinking, especially one of them being a Pompeian one. He nodded. ‘Anything else?’
‘Yes. Another man is to head north to the camp at Cremona, disband the camp and collect every soldier, be he veteran or raw recruit, officer or legionary, taking them to Samarobriva to reform the Fourteenth, who were wiped out a few months ago.’
Fronto stepped back as if struck. A legion wiped out? Then things were every bit as bad as Priscus had implied. Suddenly, all his attention was on the matter at hand, his sickness entirely forgotten.