‘Did you see her?’ Gaius Paullus whispered, his voice tremulous.
‘I don’t know.’ Scipio’s voice was hoarse with the smoke, and he passed his hand over his face, leaning with the other on Fabius for support. ‘The fumes from the hearth were very strong, a sweetness that made me feel light-headed. It must be the weed that Polybius warned of. I’m not sure what I saw, but there might have been something in the darkness, hanging there, and I felt an exhalation that wafted the leaves over the fire, making them crackle and burn. When that happened there was a voice, a deep voice but that of a woman, ancient and cackling. I nearly fainted when I heard it.’
‘Well,’ Gaius Paullus asked, his voice hushed, ‘what did she say?’
Scipio shook his head. ‘I’m not sure. It was a verse, a riddle. All that I heard was this: The eagle and the sun shall unite, and in their union shall lie the future of Rome.’
‘What on earth can that mean?’
Fabius led Scipio back down a few steps to where Petraeus had been waiting for them, and thought hard. ‘If the eagle means Metellus and the sun represents the Scipiones, then your joint destiny is to take Rome forward.’
‘Metellus in the east, Scipio in the west,’ Petraeus growled. ‘That’s what the Sibyl foretold when Scipio Africanus and I came here all those years ago. She said that one with the name Scipio would conquer Carthage and have the world at his feet.’
‘It cannot be me, then,’ Scipio said, pushing Fabius away, stumbling against the rocks and then standing without assistance, blinking in a shaft of sunlight that came through the smoke. ‘The Senate is too cautious to declare war, and Carthage will remain unfinished business.’
‘Maybe for now, but war with Carthage is possible within our lifetimes,’ Gaius Paullus said cautiously.
Scipio took a swig of water from the skin that Fabius had offered him. ‘How can you know this?’
‘The day that we left Rome I spent the morning in the Forum. It began as a rumour among the people, and then became a murmur in the Senate, and then a clamour that drowned out all debate, until the consuls ordered the guard to unsheathe their swords to shut everybody up. And then Cato stood up to the rostrum and said the words that had been on everyone’s lips.’
The centurion stared at him. ‘Out with it, man.’
Gaius Paullus swallowed hard. ‘Carthago delenda est.’
In the silence that followed, Fabius looked up and saw a crow flying high across the sky, just as his father had told him he had twice seen before sailing to war. Scipio turned to Gaius Paullus and repeated the words, his voice hoarse now with emotion. ‘Carthago delenda est. Carthage must be destroyed.’
The centurion fixed Scipio in his gaze, his eyes gleaming with a fire that Fabius had not seen in them before. ‘Almost fifty years ago I stood with your adoptive grandfather at this very spot, when war was in the offing. Eighteen years later we stood before the walls of Carthage, battle-hardened, watching Hannibal crawl before us, pleading for peace. Then, the Senate baulked at issuing the final order. Now, you are a new breed of men, and when those of you who live to see the day stand in front of those walls yourselves, there will be no appeasement, no mercy to the vanquished. That much I have taught you in the academy. There will be much preparation, and much hardship, and I myself will not live to see it. But I will die happy, knowing that the job will at last be finished.’
Gaius Paullus stood at attention, staring straight ahead, the toll of the last few days showing on his face. Scipio straightened and slapped his right hand on his chest, his voice still clenched with emotion. ‘You can depend on us, centurion.’
Just as they were about to turn and leave, the sound of a horse’s hooves came clattering from the crater, and a rider wearing an official messenger’s gold-rimmed tunic and neck gorget came into view. He dismounted, holding the horse’s bridle as it stomped and snorted in the fumes, and came up to them. ‘Gnaeus Petraeus Atinus, holder of the corona obsidionalis, I have news from the Senate. The war against King Perseus of Macedon is heading for a decisive battle. Lucius Aemilius Paullus has requested a further call to arms. The Senate has authorized the raising of another legion.’
Fabius’ heart began to pound. He looked towards Scipio, seeing his eyes suddenly gleam. The messenger turned to Scipio. ‘Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, your father requests that you be appointed a temporary military tribune on his staff. Gaius Aemilius Paullus, you are appointed temporary tribune to be second in command of the third maniple of the new legion. And Fabius Petronius Secundus, as your eighteenth birthday has passed, you are to be a legionary and standard-bearer of the first cohort of the first legion, on the special recommendation of primipilus Gnaeus Petraeus Atinus.’
Fabius felt a surge of excitement and glanced at the centurion, who nodded curtly. Petraeus must have put in a word for him in Rome before they left. He must have known that the call to arms would come before their journey was over. That was what this trip had really been about, preparing them for this moment. Scipio stood up and spoke. ‘So this is it. Our time in the academy is finished.’
The centurion placed his hand on the hilt of his sword. ‘Now you must prove yourselves in blood. You must learn to kill like legionaries, winning the respect of the toughest soldiers the world has ever known. I do not know what the words of the Sibyl mean. But I do know this. Your right to order legionaries into battle must be earned. Then, you can heed the call of Cato and lead a Roman army back to Carthage.’
‘And today, centurion?’
‘Today, you march to war.’
PART TWO
ROME
167 BC
The Triumph of Aemilius Paullus
4
Fabius shut his eyes and took a deep breath, feeling his chest swell against his breastplate and smelling the heady aroma of incense that filled the air. He opened his eyes, and was dazzled by the view. All of Rome seemed to be on fire that night, not a fire of destruction but of celebration: a thousand basins of burning oil lining the processional route from the Ostia gate through the Forum to the Field of Mars. Here on the podium below the Capitoline Temple they were at the apex of the procession, at the end of the Sacred Way where the legionaries marching towards them veered west towards the open ground of the Field of Mars for the games and spectacles that would carry on through the night.
He and Scipio had left the head of the first legion a few minutes before to bound up the steps so that Scipio could stand beside his father Aemilius Paullus as the procession reached its climax. Polybius was there too, standing behind Aemilius Paullus, and beside them was Marcus Porcius Cato, in his rightful position on the podium as elder statesman of the Senate, a former consul and censor who was one of Aemilius Paullus’ oldest friends and supporters. Fabius glanced at the general, who raised his right hand in salute and held it steady as each legion marched by. Beneath the burnished armour he was now an old man, gnarled and leathery skinned like Cato, both of them veterans who had stood here as young tribunes watching triumphal processions long before Fabius and Scipio had even been born. This day would be the last dose of glory for the generation who had fought Hannibal, for those who knew they would soon follow Scipio Africanus to Elysium but only truly rest once Carthage had finally been vanquished.