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  Alfred Duggan

  Three's Company

  Alfred Duggan

  1903–1964

  ‘There have been few historical imaginations better informed or more gifted than Alfred Duggan’s’ (The New Criterion).

  Historian, archaeologist and novelist Alfred Duggan wrote historical fiction and non-fiction about a wide range of subjects, in places and times as diverse as Julius Caesar’s Rome and the Medieval Europe of Thomas Becket.

  Although he was born in Argentina, Duggan grew up in England, and was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford. After Oxford, he travelled extensively through Greece and Turkey, visiting almost all the sites later mentioned in his books. In 1935 he helped excavate Constantine’s palace in Istanbul.

  Duggan came to writing fiction quite late in his life: his first novel about the First Crusade, Knight in Armour, was published in 1950, after which he published at least a book every year until his death in 1964. His fictional works were bestselling page-turners, but thoroughly grounded in meticulous research informed by Duggan’s experience as an archaeologist and historian.

  Duggan has been favourably compared to Bernard Cornwell as well as being praised in his own right as ‘an extremely gifted writer who can move into an unknown period and give it life and immediacy’ (New York Times).

  Prologue

  78 BC

  Never before had Rome seen such a funeral. The head of the procession reached the Forum before the corpse on its towering bier had left the house. By themselves, the veterans who marched before their dead leader made an army great enough to overawe the City. But they marched unarmed, in the decent grey togas of mourning; for their old general, though retired, had nevertheless died master of Rome; and the sensible constitution he had established would endure after his death. Behind the great army of veterans came the pontiffs, grouped in their colleges before the images of the great gods who cared for the welfare of Rome; even the gods wore mourning. After the pontiffs the Vestals rode in their sacred chariots. At the rear of the religious procession marched in solitary state the Pontifex Maximus, controller of the Luck of Rome.

  Then came the magistrates of the City. First the young quaestors, dignified in their official togas. Next the two curule aediles, their consecrated chairs, decked with luminous ivory, carried before them. Then the praetors, whose attendants also carried ivory chairs; before each praetor marched two lictors, displaying the fasces, the bundles of rods with an axe in the midst, which were the sign that these magistrates had power to flog or kill.

  Behind the praetors marched nearly every Senator in Rome, more than two hundred of them. Not quite all of them were there; for this great procession was a political demonstration as well as a display of public grief. For all that the dead man had been supreme in Rome for many years, he still had political opponents in the Senate.

  The tall bier, surrounded by professional mourners and the images of the gens Cornelia, could already be seen in the distance when the supreme embodiment of official sorrow defiled into the Forum. Behind twelve lictors walked this year’s holder of the military and civil authority of the republic, Quintus Lutatius Catulus the Consul. He wore the grey toga of mourning, even now veiling his head as though he were in the act of serving the gods; for he was to offer sacrifice to the genius of the dead man as soon as the pyre was lit.

  ‘Where’s father?’ young Marcus Aemilius Lepidus called into the ear of his pedagogue, in a kind of shouted whisper. He must shout to be heard above the frenzied cheering of the crowd; but he had enough common sense, even at twelve years of age, not to broadcast that question among the bystanders.

  ‘Father ought to be there,’ he continued, ‘beside old Catulus. He’s just as grand as the other Consul, even if his name comes second in the proclamations because he didn’t get quite so many votes. He told me so himself, when I asked him. The republic and the City are ruled by two Consuls equal in power. Have those Senators put another slight upon father? Do you think that if I shouted “Up the Lepidi” there are enough of our clients within hearing to start a riot?’

  ‘Be quiet, young master, for your own sake as well as for mine. We ought not to be here at all, as you know very well. If it comes out that we stood in this crowd you will be beaten and I might be turned adrift.’

  ‘We came only to see the show, because never before has there been anything so wonderful. When the bier passes I shall shout for joy, because the old brute’s dead at last. They may think I am cheering him, but you and I will know different. All the same, something must have happened to father. He went out this morning with his lictors, and we all took it for granted he was going to the funeral.’

  ‘Be easy, young master. Nothing has happened to your father. Here we are on the edge of the Forum, with citizens all round us. If one of the Consuls had been mixed up in a brawl the news would be here in a flash.’

  The news was already travelling through the Forum, but because it was not very important news it did not travel very quickly.

  ‘Have you heard about Lepidus the Consul?’ A pompous merchant two rows before them in the crowd had turned round to spread information among his fellow-citizens. ‘He was outside the house as the procession started. He wore full insignia, and had all his lictors with him, so they thought he was waiting to take his place among the mourners. Instead he tried to prohibit the whole show! He told them such extravagant display was against the law, his law. No one took any notice, so the silly demagogue called up his lictors and went home again. It’s a shame that he should be burned with only one Consul to honour his ashes.’

  ‘It’s a shame that he should be mourned by even one Consul. We are free citizens of a free city.’ That was the voice of an angry old man at the back of the crowd.

  ‘Shut up, grandpa. There may be others here who agree with you, but any soothsayer will tell you that it brings bad luck to speak evil of him while his veterans march through the Forum.’ That was an anonymous voice.

  ‘Here come the incense, and the images,’ shouted the pedagogue, anxious to end this threatening political exchange. ‘Mercy me, what a lot of images! Can anyone tell me, who was the Cornelius who was twice Consul, triumphed as praetor, and won the civic crown?’

  Several bystanders volunteered different identifications, and the dangerous moment passed.

  This was the part of the procession which, by infringing the sumptuary laws, had incurred the vain prohibition of the Consul. There were more than two hundred litters full of vastly expensive spices and Arabian incense, and two life-size figures, of a Consul and his lictor, made entirely of this incense; these would be burned on the pyre. There were more hired mourners and musicians than had ever been assembled before in the history of the City. There was a golden casket for the ashes, covered with a gauzy veil of purple.

  There were also images in great numbers. But the law could say nothing to this, for they were the deathmasks of eminent deceased Cornelians, and it was the right of their descendant to have them carried at his funeral. Behind each bust walked a masked actor, clad in the
official insignia of the dead ancestor. Every citizen could read the stereotyped marks of distinction which denoted the offices and honours once held by the living man.

  Finally there staggered by the towering bier. On it lay, in his full official robes, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Triumphator, Consul, Dictator, honoured by the Senate with the agnomen of Felix, in all but name monarch of Rome.

  There would be speeches before the torch was applied to the pyre and all this magnificence went up in smoke. But speeches in praise of Sulla did not interest young Marcus Lepidus, whose house was in opposition to the ruling faction. With his pedagogue he slipped away unnoticed, to return to the family mansion where an angry Consul was paying what he thought of Dictators who broke their own laws.

  In the autumn of the same year young Marcus idled away an afternoon staring at the rain from the portico of a country villa. He ought to have been in Rome, enjoying the envy of his school fellows and the casual notoriety in the street that was the due of the Consul’s son. Instead, just because his father was at odds with the Senate, he had been packed off to waste half this precious year in the country. Such grandeur would never come again. There had been statesmen who held the Consulship more than once, but he knew in his heart that Father was not great enough for that. Here it was November, and in January he would be no more than the son of the wealthy patrician Aemilius Lepidus. It was a shocking waste of golden months.

  His mother’s despondency added to the gloom. Women were faint-hearted by nature, and she had the excuse that her father had been killed in civil war. Or rather, he had been murdered by those beastly Optimates, after he had surrendered on the promise of a fair trial. At the time he had been a tribune, one of the consecrated protectors of the people whose persons should never be harmed; but that only went to show what Optimates were like. All the same, that was a long time ago, twenty years and more. Since then the murderous proscriptions of the tyrant Sulla had brought peace and order, even at the cost of freedom and justice. Everyone agreed that there could never be another proscription; the memory of that terrible time of slaughter was burned into the heart of every citizen. Equally there could never be another civil war, remembering the stories of their fathers, the soldiers would refuse to fight fellow-Romans.

  Grandfather Saturninus had met his fate thirteen years before Marcus was born, but some of the older servants still had stories to tell of him. At school they taught you that he had been a wicked man, who wanted to cancel all debts and free every slave, and in general undo the work of civilization; and that was the general opinion of the gentry. Even Mother did not seem proud of her father’s political programme. But he had heard her maintain that if his revolution had succeeded grandfather Saturninus would have made himself tyrant of Rome, and that it had very nearly succeeded. She seemed to imply that to fall fighting for such a splendid prize was evidence of a noble spirit.

  The feud had begun with the murder of Tiberius Gracchus, more than fifty years ago. (That crime had been committed by Optimates. They had shed first blood. They were the aggressors.) Even a boy studying modern history at school could not keep track of all the changes and chances of political life since then; the sudden coups, the murders, the open wars and the secret assassinations. But since the death of Gracchus the struggle had continued, between wicked oligarchical Optimates and noble freedom-loving Populars. It would still be going on when he, Marcus, was grown up; and he must play his part in it.

  But the struggle would now be waged constitutionally, in the Forum. There would be no more wars, never a second proscription. Sulla had seen to that, by his overwhelming victory in the field and the bloody repression that followed it. Therefore an earnest young Popular must learn the technical details of law and ritual, and the art of rhetoric; so that in due time he might stand for public office, win his election, and during his magistracy further the Popular cause. Marcus worked hard at his lessons, for Nature had not granted him a quick wit.

  It was a pity that he had been born too late, when all the fighting was over (in spite of Mother’s fears). Never again would a hero risk his head to free the people, or to make himself tyrant of Rome. Life was dull, and this rain would not stop before sunset. Time passed slowly.…

  Then brother Scipio rode up out of the mist to announce that the civil wars had begun all over again, and that the Popular army was led by his father. Hastily Marcus adjusted his ideas.

  Until six years ago brother Scipio had been brother Gnaeus, heir to all the wealth and influence of the Aemilii Lepidi. Now he was no longer in law a brother, not even a kinsman; for he had been legally adopted into the gens Cornelia, to be heir to the even greater wealth and influence of the Cornelii Scipiones. About the same time brother Lucius had become brother Paullus, in law still a distant kinsman; for he had taken over the heritage of the extinct Aemilii Paulli. So he was still an Aemilius, though no longer a brother. Marcus, the third son, six years younger than Scipio and four years younger than Paullus, found himself legally an only son and heir to his father.

  But of course, when it comes to fighting, blood is thicker than the legal tie of adoption. Marcus Aemilius Lepidus the Consul was gathering an army in Etruria, intending to march on Rome and overthrow the Optimate government; Gnaeus Scipio had slipped out of the City to join his standard. He had turned aside on his journey to convey the Consul’s instructions to his family.

  He sat back in a comfortable chair in the warmest room in the house, sipping hot wine while a servant massaged his thighs. He looked surprisingly adult, nearer twenty-eight than eighteen, dandling his long sword which lent him confidence to give orders to his own mother.

  ‘You understand, madam? You are not to leave this villa on any excuse, not even if you see soldiers foraging in the valley below. If the soldiers are Populars they will respect you, if they are Optimates they may not notice you so long as you keep quiet. You will stay until your husband sends for you. You will keep with you your son Marcus, who is too young for war. You will offer hospitality, should he require it, to your kinsman Lucius Paullus. You will also offer hospitality to the lady Junia, daughter of Decimus Silanus, who is now on her way here. Her stepfather intends to join the Popular party, and wishes to place her in a quiet refuge until the war is over. Furthermore, it has been decided that when she reaches a sufficient age she shall marry your son Marcus. Treat her as a betrothed daughter of the house. Those are the orders of your husband.’

  ‘But surely I can come fighting with you, Scipio,’ said Marcus at once. ‘I can ride, and throw a javelin; though that sword would be too heavy for me.’

  Even this tactful reference to his brother’s strength was of no avail.

  ‘You will stay with your mother, young Marcus. You have heard your father’s orders.’

  ‘Is Junia pretty?’ asked the lady Appuleia, who took little interest in masculine politics. Men were always banging one another with swords for absurdly inadequate reasons. ‘Her mother, Servilia, is beautiful and charming and clever. Flighty too, or so they say. Will Junia do us credit?’

  ‘I have never seen her. But she brings a good dowry, and her stepfather’s influence is valuable. She’s a plebeian, unfortunately, but of very good family all the same. Arrange the wedding as soon as possible, for fear Brutus should change his mind. You hear, Marcus? You will be the last patrician Lepidus, so you must make the most of it. You can be a pontiff, if you are chosen; your sons will be plebeians.’

  That was the kind of remark you expected from an elder brother, especially an elder brother who had deserted the family altar to better himself. Marcus took consolation from the knowledge that a match between patrician and plebeian could be only a civil contract, capable of dissolution whenever the husband asked for it; the only lifelong indissoluble tie was the religious marriage between two patricians. When he was grown up and his own master he could send this Junia packing if he did not like her.

  Then, to his great mortification, Marcus was sent out of the room while his mother and his ex-brother
discussed money. It was his mother who ordered him to leave, and he guessed the reason. Scipio would be asking for all the ready cash, plate, and jewels that could be found at short notice, for legionaries in rebellion demanded very high pay; and his mother would be trying to keep as much as she could, for she hated to see wasted on politics money that might have been spent rationally on fashionable splendour. He was the heir, the senior male in the household; and of course he wanted to help his father. The lady Appuleia was unwilling to confront two adversaries at once.

  Presently brother Scipio came out to the portico, in a thundering bad temper. He had collected only one mule-load of silver; though there must have been more in the villa. As he mounted his sleek warhorse he waved good-bye to Marcus. But Marcus was angry that his brother had left him under the care of the women, as though he were an infant not yet weaned; besides, the warhorse, and the long cavalry sword, were more interesting objects of contemplation than his brother’s face, which he knew well. He answered unsmiling, with a perfunctory wave of the hand.

  He never again saw brother Scipio, or his father. The improvised revolt was a failure from the start. Scipio was killed in the decisive engagement, fought in the Campus Martius at the very gate of Rome; and his father died, an outlaw and a public enemy, in Sardinia, worn out with the unfamiliar toil of collecting ships to carry the wreck of his army to the rebel Sertorius in Spain. There were whispers that grief at the indifference of his wife had hastened his end, and certainly the lady Appuleia greeted widowhood with stoic resignation. Thanks to her stubborn foresight the Aemilii Lepidi were still wealthy. As soon as conventional mourning was over she went back to the great family mansion in Rome.

  1. The Praetor Chooses a Side

  49 BC

  On this wintry day the City was full of rumours. The streets were crammed with the wagons of refugees from Picenum, which blocked the way of other refugees leaving Rome for the south. In this public commotion all outside the walls sought refuge in Rome, all the inhabitants sought hiding-places in the country. Throughout the morning the Forum had been crowded, as citizens waited to see if a magistrate would summon a public meeting; by midday they were drifting about the alleys, too restless to go home, gathering into crowds and shouting the catchwords of their parties. Though it was a working day, only slaves were at work; hardly a shop had been reopened since the public holiday for the Ides of January.