When the message reached him, he exclaimed, “Quintilius,here?” and not waiting even to snatch his cloak, had gone out and stood by the litter. The curtains parted more widely and in the failing light the two men, once comrades-in-arms, closest of friends, had looked one another in the face for the first time in sixteen years.
Quintilius said, in an easy, jocular way:
“You seem dumb-struck, Vatinius. I assure you, I am no apparition. I am bound for the baths at Calirrhoe—for my gout. Being in the neighbourhood and hearing that you were here, I proposed to spend an evening with you, and cadge a night’s lodging.”
“A barracks is not a hostelry,” Vatinius said; ‘but there is one, a good one, kept by a Greek, only a short distance along the road. I’ll send a man to guide you.”
“But this, I understand, is your home. I have come to visit you in your home. Is this a way to receive an old friend?”
“I told you, long ago in Arcta that if you did .. . what you did … you were no friend of mine.”
Lowering his voice a little, Quintilius said:
“I am now Caesar’s friend. I think, that if I need to, I could commandeer this barracks. But I would prefer to be invited.”
After a perceptible pause Vatinius said, “You are invited.”
“Good!” Quintilius said and snapped his fingers. Two slaves ran forward, and with tender care, unlashed the litter, lowered it to the ground, then lifted it—the other two slaves having led the mules out of the way—and staggering a little under the weight, carried it to the entry and there set it down, and assisted their master to alight.
Quintilius stood up cautiously, his left foot, swollen and bandaged inside the soft velvet shoe, barely touching the ground.
“That will do,” he said.
“Hand me my stick. Now, Vatinius, if you will lend me your arm, I shall manage very well.”
With obvious reluctance Vatinius bent his weathered, heavily muscled arm, and held it stiffly, keeping as much distance as possible between him and the weight, the warmth, the scent of this man, beside whom he had once marched and drilled, sweated and laughed and slept, and swum in the waters of a faraway river called the Rhone.
“Gout,” Quintilius said, ‘is not a contagious disease.” Damn you, Vatinius thought, you miss nothing; you never did.
They made slow progress along a straight, lime-washed passage towards the rear of the building where Vatinius had his quarters.
Quintilius said, “I am well provided; if my fellow can have the use of a hearth he will prepare a meal which I hope will please you—unless you have fallen victim to this Oriental nonsense about only breaking bread with your friends. Not that I have ever entertained any but friendly feelings towards you, Vatinius. Every word you said was fully justified; I knew that at the time….”
“If you don’t mind, I’d prefer not to hark back,” Vatinius said. He made the opening of a door an excuse for releasing his arm.
“These are my quarters,” he said.
It was a fair-sized room, with walls of whitewashed brick. There was a heavy wooden table, a chair, and against the wall a wide bench with curved ends, upon which from time to time, a soldier lay to submit himself to such rough surgery as an experienced centurion could perform. There was a set of shelves upon which maps and rolled records were ranged with precision, and there was a row of hooks which held weapons and equipment. An oil lamp, just lighted and emitting a faint, disagreeable odour, stood on a wall bracket, and a candle burned in an iron stick on the table. An uncurtained alcove in one side wall was furnished with a hard-looking bed and an iron tripod holding a basin and ewer. In the outer wall a shutter rattled in the wind. The general effect was neat, soldierly and cheerless.
“How familiar it smells,” Quintilius said.
“So this is your home.”
It had been his home for a little more than three years, and Vatinius had never before entered it without a small secret feeling of satisfaction. His ultimate goal, to become primus pilus, he had never achieved, but out of the shifting, homeless thing that was army life,
he had made his little niche for himself, and for three years he had enjoyed more independence, more privacy and more authority than most of his kind could hope for.
Tonight, however, viewing the only home he had through Quintilius’ eyes, he saw it as stark, devoid of comfort, and impermanent. It was not his own; it was government property and his tenuous hold upon it could be ended tomorrow by a word spoken by a man he had never seen, and to whom he, Vatinius, was not,even a name.
He said, “You’ll need a cushion, even on the chair.”
“I shall need three,” Quintilius amended, glancing at the bench where Vatinius had pulled aching teeth and set broken bones. Two of the big cushions from his litter along its length and one between its head and the wall and it would be converted into a couch of moderate comfort.
“I’ll have them fetched,” Vatinius said. As he went into the passage to shout the order, he thought—He’s had a long experience in making himself comfortable. Unwillingly he remembered various occasions in the past when Quintilius’ genius for finding the easiest way, the best place, the little bit extra, had contributed to his own well-being.
Propped on his stick, leaning his hip against the table as he waited for the cushions to be brought, Quintilius said, when Vatinius reentered:
“So you are in charge here? Permanently?”
“You should know that in the army nothing is permanent. I’ve been here rather more than three years. The place is occupied by one century, for two months, turn and turn about, and there was always trouble about the state it was left in, or a discrepancy in the stores. So the tribune decided that it would be best if one man was made wholly responsible, and stayed here. I was chosen.”
Quintilius remembered the gossip in the Antonia in Jerusalem; blunt tongued, inflexible by nature, and thirty-five years old, and without a single black mark on his charge sheet, Vatinius had been steered into this backwater by very willing hands; and here would stay, if authority had its way, until he reached retirement age, or became infirm.
“If the appointment pleases you, my congratulations,” he said.
“And I think it does please you. You have the look of a contented man.”
Vatinius realised, with a slight shock, that up to the moment of Quintilius’ arrival he had been contented. Too easily contented?
The entry of an orderly bearing the three cushions, gave him an excuse for making no reply. The cushions were placed and Quintilius arranged himself. Then one of the slaves came in, soft-footed, to say that the meal would be ready in an hour; another brought in a tall flagon, made of glass, in a filigree net of silver and two wine-cups, silver, decorated with a pattern of vine-leaves, the tendrils making the handles. A third brought a flat silver dish containing salted prawns, sardines and anchovies, olives and almonds, delicacies calculated to provoke appetite without allaying it, and to keep thirst lively.
“I have brought you a really prime Falernian,” Quintilius said to Vatinius. To the slaves he said, “Bring the table nearer to me, then you can go and I will pour. Now Vatinius, turn the chair about and make yourself comfortable.”
He reached out his plump, beringed hand; and Vatinius saw the lean, brown calloused hand of his young fellow legionary. The mental vision shifted and expanded, and he saw two young men, walking back from the Games in the arena at Arcta; heard himself say, “Then you choose between him and me. Nobody’s boy-wife is going to be a friend of mine. If you take up with that turd, Marius, I shall never speak to you again!”
All long ago and far away. And it was crazy to think that now, by eating and drinking and talking with him, one was condoning. It was crazier still to feel that in some subtle way the food and the wine were contaminated. He’d eaten, in his time, what was practically carrion, drunk out of filthy ditches.
There was also—and this he must face, rationally—the practical considerations. Quintilius had said something about falling victim to Oriental nonsense; and Vatinius knew what was said of him in Jerusalem—‘as near Jew as a non-Jew can be’. It needed only one malicious remark, which Quintilius was capable of making, and somebody was going to say, “It’s high time Vatinius was shifted.” On at least
two occasions, when soldiershad come into conflict with the natives, he had tried to be impartial; that would not have escaped the sharp eye of authority, or done him any good. Better be careful. He took up his cup and deliberately chose one of the salted prawns.