Gaius stirred uncomfortably at the pronoun, hoping his father would not remember that Cynric was Bendeigid’s foster son. It would have saved everyone a lot of trouble, he thought grimly, if he had killed Cynric when he had the chance.
“Ah well,” the older man continued, “nobody blames you for not catching him, and wherever the survivors run to, it’s not likely we’ll see them here . . .” He looked around him with what Gaius could only characterize as a smug sigh.
“Not likely,” his son agreed. “Are you really comfortable here?” After retiring from the army, Macellius had built his mansion, almost immediately been elected a decurion and was rapidly becoming a pillar of the community.
“Oh yes, it’s a nice place. Settled down a lot in the past few years, and the town is growing. The amphitheater is a draw, of course. More shops every day, it seems to me, and I’ve just coughed up a goodly sum to pay for the new temple.”
“A miniature Rome, in fact,” Gaius said, smiling. “All you lack is a coliseum for the Games.”
“Gods preserve me.” Macellius held up one hand, laughing. “No doubt I’d have to pay for those as well. This business of being a city father is highly overrated. I hardly dare open my door for fear II be given the honor of contributing to something new!”
But he was laughing, Gaius observed, and thought that he had never seen his father so contented.
“There’s one thing I’d not grudge the money for, though,” said Macellius, “and that’s to send you to Rome. It’s time, you know. You’ll get a good recommendation from the Governor after this last bit of service, and you can’t rise much further on the kind of patronage your father-in-law and I can give you. Has Licinius said anything?”
“He’s mentioned it,” Gaius said cautiously. “But I can’t go until everyone’s satisfied that things will stay quiet here.”
“I can’t help wishing Vespasian had lived longer.” Macellius frowned. “There was a stingy old fox for you, but he knew how to pick good men. This cub of his, Domitian, seems determined to rule like an Eastern despot. He’s banished the philosophers, I hear. Now I ask you, what harm could a lot of prosy old bores do?”
Gaius, remembering his own desperation when his old tutor had droned on about Plato, felt a sneaking sympathy for the Emperor.
“In any case, he’s the man you’ll have to impress if you want a good posting, and though I’ll miss you, a procuratorship somewhere in one of the older provinces is the logical next step in your career.”
“I’ll miss you, too,” said Gaius quietly. And that was true, but he realized that he would not particularly miss Licinius, or even Julia and the girls. In fact, he thought he would be glad to get away from Britain for a while, to some place where nothing would remind him of Cynric or Eilan.
Gaius finally set out for Rome on the ides of August, attended by a Greek slave called Philo, a gift from Licinius, who swore he could be depended upon to drape a toga decently and send his master out each morning looking like a gentleman. In his saddlebag was the Procurator’s annual report on the economy of the Province, which gave Gaius the status of official courier and carried with it the right to use the military post houses.
The weather held fair, but even so it seemed a weary journey. The further south they traveled the drier the country became – to Gaius’s northern eyes a desert, though the officers at the posting houses laughed to hear him say so and traded stories of Egypt and Palestine, where the desert sands scoured monuments older than Rome. He found himself wishing that like Caesar he could while away the time by writing his memoirs, but even if he waited forty years to do so, he doubted anyone would be interested in reading them.
Even Julia’s chatter would have been welcome, though these days all she seemed able to talk about was the children. But children were what he had married her for, he reminded himself; children, and social standing. And so far everything had gone more or less to plan. Only, as he passed through the endless miles of slave-farmed estates in Gaul, Gaius found himself wondering if this pursuit of rank and position was really worth it. And then they would come to the next inn, or the next villa belonging to one of Licinius’s friends. In the arms of whatever pretty slave girl they sent to warm his bed he could forget both Julia and Eilan, and in the morning he would tell himself that it was only his fatigue that had been speaking, or perhaps a natural anxiety about how he would do in Rome.