A Mixture of Madness, Book II of The Bow - By Levkoff, Andrew Page 0,41

stain.”

“Dominus…”

“No, Alexander. I will not be satisfied till I have penned an equal scrawl across the remainder of his soulless existence.

“I will not be satisfied until I have stolen from him and destroyed the destiny he seeks—to return Rome to the days of kings; to be the first to ascend to his newly gilded throne to begin his dynasty.

“Until the day I walk the streets of our city and hear men both great and small respond with apathy and indifference to the name of Gaius Julius Caesar, I will not be satisfied.”

A stone bench lay just off the path where we stood; Crassus bent and reached for it. He sat, exhausted. The clouds above us, leached of color, now marched resolutely onwards, their greyed and ghostly bulks floating on the glow from a million lamps. “If you could only go to war alone,” I said.

“What? I am too tired for riddles, Alexander.”

“When I speak, dominus, the house of Crassus listens. When you speak, all Rome pays heed. Where Crassus goes, tens of thousands must follow. How many must journey to the edge of our world to mete out Caesar’s castigation?” I knelt before him. “You are the better man, dominus. Will you travel thirteen hundred miles for honor’s sake when your wife waits for you not fifty feet from this very spot? Is there an altar large enough to hold the years and the lives that must be sacrificed to balance your scales of retribution?”

Crassus spoke not in anger, but with a voice tired beyond his years. “Did you know, Alexander, that when you first came to me, there yet lingered serious debate over whether or not slaves had souls? If my judgment had fallen on the ignorant side of that silly notion as we converse here in this serene garden, it would make the task much less irksome to fetch my pugio and end your animal life. I am an enlightened man, Alexander, and I delight in the small barbs and vexations you hurl at me. Your soul notwithstanding, my old friend, you have gone too far. Tell me, do you hold your life so cheaply, even now that your Livia is returned?”

Livia and I were shackled to him with the same invisible chains, yet I bridled to hear him speak of her. “She is not my Livia, and no, dominus, I hold nothing. You have graciously assumed the burden of holding my life in your hands for me since the day we met, thirty years ago.”

Crassus took one of my hands in both of his; they were warm and soft, the manicured nails buffed and unbroken. He smiled as a proud father smiles at his son; as a man so secure in his vision of the future that he will see no other. “You should be grateful, Alexander. Evidently I hold it more dearly than you yourself. You must not speak of this again. Do you understand?”

I understood that in that fading light, we had wrestled on the fulcrum between two futures: one bright, one bloody. I understood that I had failed him. I had failed us all. “I am not your enemy, dominus.”

“No,” he sighed. “You are not.” He pushed himself up off the bench. “It is dark. Let us go in.”

Chapter X

56 BCE Fall, Rome

Year of the consulship of

Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus and L. Marcius Philippus

“Where’s my sword?” I asked.

Malchus and Betto both laughed. Hanno stood by as my second, ready to offer a towel or a footstool which he had strapped to his back. “Here you go,” Betto said, handing me a six-foot wooden pole with a leather-bound crosspiece that made the contrivance look distressingly like a miniature of a crucifixion cross. Then, without thinking, he tossed a shovel to Hanno, who had the good sense to step out of the way.

“Why are you trying to hurt me? Why is he trying to hurt me?” Under my tutelage, Hanno’s Latin was improving slowly. (Lady Tertulla had implored me to assist, rightfully arguing that correct speech is the first step on the road toward civilized comportment.) The boy had already honed to a fine edge the cadence of indignation, though I cannot say from whom he had learned the art.

“Hannibal, I was not trying to—”

“You threw the shovel,” Hanno persisted. “I saw you throw the shovel.”

“Yes, I did throw it, but I—”

“Betto knows I catch bad. He knows.”

“Betto would never hurt you. He is your friend, Hannibal.”

“Friends don’t throw things.”

Betto muttered, “Sometimes they feel like throwing