‘Perhaps that was his design,’ Terence said. ‘He knew it would do a small boy no good to be told that his destiny was greater than those around him. He knew that to achieve greatness you had to be an outsider. He knew that by struggling against adverse opinion, by sometimes feeling inadequate, you would become a stronger person, and that once you recognized your strengths you would develop a burning ambition to compensate for those feelings you had as a child, an ambition that would allow you to rise above them all.’
Julia turned to Scipio. ‘And yet he knew that your ambition would need to be curbed, to be controlled. So your father appointed Polybius to be your mentor. My father Sextus Julius Caesar says there’s no greater check on a man’s ego than to be taught by a good historian who can show how men risen to greatness can so easily fall into obscurity.’
There was a commotion at the door, and Fabius’ heart sank. Metellus came staggering into the peristyle, followed by a cluster of his friends. He looked around, and then spied them, waving a flagon in their direction. ‘Why don’t you come carousing with us, Scipio? Afraid of the prostibulae in the brothels? Maybe you’ve forgotten what to do, spending too long in the company of those Greek eunuchs.’
Fabius saw Scipio’s knuckles whiten as he clutched the edge of the seat, and he gripped Scipio’s wrist. ‘Keep your cool,’ he whispered to him. ‘He’s goading you, but these are just words. If he draws a blade, then that’s another matter.’
‘If he mentions Polybius, I’ll rip his throat out,’ Scipio growled.
‘He’s too clever to do that,’ Julia murmured. ‘He may deride the Greeks, but he knows how much Polybius is respected for his military expertise in the Senate. He knows how to play the game, and he’s not as drunk as he looks.’
Metellus had swayed onto the stage, and took another flagon from one of his companions. ‘Or maybe you can’t afford it,’ Metellus jeered, raising the flagon to the audience and then taking a deep swig. ‘Maybe Scipio Aemilianus has given away all of his money to women, because he’s incapable of giving them any other favours.’
‘That’s my mother he’s talking about, and my sisters, whom I’ve helped to support with my inheritance from Africanus,’ Scipio muttered, his teeth clenched with anger. ‘I’m still a richer man than he is, even so. And he’d better not mention my father’s generosity.’
Julia shook her head. ‘He won’t do it today, at your father’s triumph. He’ll do it when the name of Paullus has faded from memory and he can deride him among his friends for returning from Pydna without a thought for his own pocket. He will use that against you, to show a weakness of character within your gens.’
‘It’s not a weakness, it’s a strength,’ Scipio growled.
Julia turned to him. ‘You gave your adoptive grandmother Aemilia’s fortune to your mother Papira. You paid off the dowries of your adoptive sisters. And when we were together this evening you told me that when the time comes you will give your share of your father’s estate to your brother, and pay half the cost of the funeral games that by rights as eldest son should be his alone to bear; and then when your mother Papira dies you will pass on the fortune that you gave her from Aemilia to your own blood sisters.’
‘I will do those things,’ Scipio said quietly, watching Metellus as he pushed the actors aside and danced around the stage himself, parodying their performance, and then smashed his flagon on the floor and guffawed at his companions, turning back and bowing low to the audience in derision.
‘You’ve been generous to others, Scipio,’ Julia said quickly, as if knowing that her time was nearly up. ‘You’ve made a virtue of being magnanimous, and Polybius and others can hold you up as an example. But be careful. Rome is suspicious of too much generosity, and it will work against you. Metellus will say that you have used your wealth to compensate for the criticisms that others have made against your character, and that it just shows more clearly the weaknesses that he wants to find in you. It’s time you were generous to yourself, Scipio. You must forget the opinion of others and look to your own future.’
‘Julia!’ Metellus’ thick voice bawled from the stage, and he waved a hand in their direction. ‘It’s you I’ve come here for. It’s time I had a taste of my marriage rights. I’ve denied myself the prostibulae this evening so I can show you what I’m worth. This theatre can go to the dogs. We’re leaving now.’
Scipio suddenly leapt out of his seat, bounded across the peristyle and pounced on Metellus, pushing him hard against the wall of the stage and pinning him by his chest. He whipped out the knife he carried on his belt and pressed it against Metellus’ neck, forcing his head upwards. For a few moments Scipio held the position, his face snarling, while everyone watched in stunned silence. Metellus strained his head sideways, staring down at the blade. ‘Go on, Scipio,’ he said between clenched teeth. ‘Too squeamish for the sight of blood? It’s all that hunting you do. It’s softened you. You should try killing men one day.’
Fabius came up behind Scipio and grasped his wrist with an iron grip, pulling the hand with the knife away and dragging him back, while several of Metellus’ companions did the same for him. He shook them away, straightening himself up, and then marched across to Julia, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her into his group. ‘I’ll remember this, Scipio Aemilianus. You should watch your back.’
Fabius continued to hold Scipio as the group staggered off. Terence sat slumped in the corner with his head in his hands, and the audience began to get up and leave. Scipio seemed stunned by what had happened, unaccustomed to losing control, as if his rage against Metellus had been triggered to displace his feelings of impotence over Julia’s departure. Now that she was gone he seemed paralysed by disbelief. Fabius could feel him shaking, and the blood pounding through his veins. Julia glanced back one last time as they rounded the corner, and then they were gone. Fabius released Scipio, took the knife from him and resheathed it, and then led him by the shoulder out of the house and on to the street, facing back in the direction of the Forum. ‘Where to now?’ he said.
Scipio stared grimly ahead, to where the stragglers from Metellus’ group could still be seen, one of them throwing up in a doorway. ‘To the shrine in my house on the Palatine, to honour the memory of my adoptive grandfather Scipio Africanus. And then we go to Macedonia, to hunt. I need to be far from men, and far from Rome. We leave tonight.’
Fabius watched Scipio reach up and touch the silver phalera disc on his breastplate that he had been awarded for valour at Pydna. He could guess what Scipio was thinking. The disc was the gift of a father to a son who by rights should not have been there, a year too young to have been appointed to the rank of military tribune. Only Fabius knew that he had truly earned the decoration, that the phalera was not a sign of favouritism, that Scipio had run alone at the phalanx and cleaved his way through the ranks of the enemy until he was dripping with Macedonian blood. But Scipio knew perfectly well that there were others who would not see it that way: detractors and enemies of his father and grandfather, those who would scorn his achievements at Pydna as exaggeration and even use the award of the phalera against him. In the fickle world of Rome, the patronage of his father that had got him to Pydna and put him on the first rung of the military ladder could also be his undoing, allowing his detractors to claim that he had always had an easy ride of it and had hung on the togas of a father and a grandfather he could never hope to emulate.
Fabius knew him well enough to read his thoughts. Scipio loved Rome, and he hated Rome. He loved Rome for giving him the path to military glory, but he hated Rome for taking Julia from him. He remembered what Scipio had said that night when they had shared a flagon of wine staring at the stars from the Circus Maximus. One day he would return here wearing a breastplate of his own, more magnificent than this one, made of gold and silver taken in his own conquests, decorated not with images of past wars but with those of his own greatest victory, a burning citadel with a general standing astride the vanquished leader of Rome’s greatest enemy. He would return to celebrate the greatest triumph that Rome had ever seen. He would wait until he had received the adulation of the Senate, but then would turn his back on it and discard the ways that had been destined to bring him such unhappiness today, the day of his father’s triumph, also the appointed day of Julia’s betrothal. He would leave the Senate impotent, powerless, because he would take with him the people, the legionaries and the centurions, and together they would forge the greatest army the world had ever seen — one that would break free from the shackles of Rome and sweep all before it, led by a general whose conquests would make those of Alexander the Great seem paltry by comparison.