‘I hope to see that day. And if I have anything to do with it, Syracuse will also send Hannibal aid when the Romans have been beaten here.’
‘This calls for a drink,’ declared Hanno, delighted. ‘You’ll come back to the house?’
‘Only if you insist,’ replied Kleitos with a smile.
‘Aurelia will be glad to see you. She finds the confinement hard.’
‘Well, it won’t last forever. When Himilco arrives with his army, the balance will tip in our favour again.’
‘That’s what I tell her, but she worries about what may happen when Hippocrates returns,’ said Hanno, scowling. May the gods grant me the chance to kill him then.
‘We’ll keep her hidden until the Romans have been smashed, my friend, never fear. When your mission is complete, you can travel to Italy with her.’
Hanno nodded and made as if he were pleased, which he was — mostly. It wasn’t ideal that Aurelia should become a camp follower once more, and follow him all over Italy, but it seemed the only way that they could avoid being parted.
Spotting the enemy camps in the distance, he put his concerns aside. It was pointless to cross bridges before they were reached. Until the Romans outside the city were beaten, everything else was irrelevant. In the meantime, he and Aurelia were still together.
Besides doing his duty, and sending messages to Hannibal, that was what mattered.
Aurelia was tired of secreting herself away, tired of the lack of company. She had been quick to seek out Elira when she and Hanno had returned, but had been upset to find that the Illyrian no longer wished to see her often. Elira’s reason — which hadn’t altogether surprised Aurelia — was that she had met a soldier in the months that Aurelia had been away. It was understandable that she wanted to spend her time with him, but it meant that the rare, joyful occasions such as Kleitos’ visit the night before were all the more poignant. From the moment that Hanno left each morning, every passing hour felt like ten. I live in a prison, Aurelia thought bitterly, gazing around the main living area. She had to admit that it was large, and well furnished — Hanno had seen to that — and there were two windows, so light was not an issue. She had Hannibal the cat for company — Aurelia had insisted on retrieving him from Elira, with whom he’d been left. Yet these things helped only a little. The three chambers: living room, bedroom, and a kitchen area with a small latrine off it, were in effect, a jail.
In the past, Aurelia would hardly have noticed the everyday noises that carried in from the street below. Now, they felt like torture, because they represented a normal world, one that she could never be part of. Children shrieked with pleasure as they played; shopkeepers vied for the attention of passers-by, promising that their bread, their ironmongery, their wine was the best in Syracuse; men greeted soldiers whom they knew, and grilled them about the state of the defences and the disposition of the enemy. Women bemoaned the prices of food, their children’s behaviour, their husbands’ failure to listen to what was being said. Aurelia had taken to standing by the side of the windows, out of sight, and listening longingly to the carryings on. Hearing soldiers joking with each other made her think of Quintus, who might be only a few miles away, for all the good it did her. What Aurelia found hardest, however, was hearing a baby cry, or a very small child calling for its mother. Her barely healed grief for Publius would be scraped raw yet again, reducing her to a sobbing wreck. Why had she decided to travel to Rhegium? Why had she not stayed in Rome? The fact that Publius might have as easily been carried off by disease there as in Syracuse was of little solace. In a part of her mind, she lived in Rome with a happy, healthy son, and received occasional letters from her brother.
She wished again that the war was over, that she and Hanno could settle down and live a normal life. They didn’t talk much about the struggle — what was the point? — but it was clear that he felt the coming campaign would deliver a decisive victory for Carthage and Syracuse. The size of Himilco’s army, and his elephants, lent credence to this theory. It felt a touch traitorous to wish for such a result, for Aurelia still felt very much a Roman, but it seemed the only way that they would ever be able to leave the city, the only way that any kind of ordinary existence could be resumed. Yet even that would be transient, she thought wearily. Hanno’s oaths would mean a return to Italy, and to Hannibal’s army. For her, that signified life in a followers’ camp. Hanno asserted that she would be safe there, but after the few days she’d spent in one, Aurelia knew that her existence would be far from easy.
There was another way, one that she didn’t even like to admit to. After all that Hanno had done for her — rescuing her from Hippocrates and helping her to bury Publius were just two of the things — to consider leaving him felt like the ultimate form of betrayal. When her loneliness and grief overwhelmed her, however, she couldn’t help revisiting the idea: she fantasised about escaping to the Roman camps outside the city, there to find Quintus. After that, she could travel to Rhegium, to find out if her husband Lucius had lived or died. A different guilt scourged her now. What if he had recovered from his injuries? Would he have given her up for dead as easily as she had him? She doubted it. Did that mean that she should have remained loyal to Lucius, instead of betraying him with Hanno? No, Aurelia decided. Her union with him had been serviceable but sterile, and typical of an arranged marriage. There had been none of the fire she felt with Hanno. Publius had been the cement that had held them together. With him gone, there would have been nothing left but grief-laden memories.
Neither could she return to the family farm, because fighting still raged in Campania thanks to Capua’s continued support for Hannibal. Quintus would not return to it until the war was over. Her only other option was Rome, and the house that she had shared with Lucius. Picturing that brought home a stark realisation. To go back would merely move what she had here to another place, with the obvious absence of Hanno.
Aurelia sighed. Life had to be accepted as it was, but that didn’t mean that she had to remain incarcerated forever. There could be little real harm in venturing beyond her door, surely? The guards from the palace were unlikely to frequent this part of the city. In broad daylight, other men would not accost her. If she didn’t speak to anyone, her Roman accent would go unnoticed. Moreover, the baths that Hanno had taken her to once weren’t far.
Her mood lifted at once.
Life could go on. Life would go on.
With Hanno.
Chapter XX
Within a day of returning safely, the news reached the Roman camps that it had been Attalus who had betrayed the plot to open a gate in the city walls. All eighty conspirators had been tortured to death and, in a stark warning from Epicydes, the heads of many had been shot into the no man’s land between Syracuse and the Roman fortifications. As far as Quintus had been able to ascertain, Marius’ head had not been one of them, but he still dreaded what the Syracusans had done with his friend’s body. He longed to end the siege now, and to avenge yet another comrade’s death.
He also wanted to reveal Pera’s role in Attalus’ treachery, but knew it for a fruitless exercise. As if to prove that his concerns were well grounded, Pera had taken to snooping around the maniple’s tents, ostensibly checking to see if Quintus was well. His real purpose was revealed one day when he casually dropped Attalus into the conversation. Quintus put on the blankest of faces, and said that there had been so many Syracusan dogs that he’d long since forgotten their names. Pera had seemed satisfied, but from that moment on, Quintus took care not to wander anywhere on his own, especially at night.
The siege dragged on with no signs of any change. The weather grew warm and pleasant, and the grey, cloudy days of winter became a distant memory. As the days passed, the temperatures climbed steadily, and Quintus and his comrades resigned themselves to another baking-hot summer, covered in dust, manning their fortifications outside the city. Inevitably, the maniple’s morale dipped. The thought of going on patrol, once something that they would have wanted to avoid, became every man’s dream. When Corax overheard Quintus and Urceus talking of this one day, he laughed and told them not to live in hope.