“Another?”

Quintus Fufius Calenus held his hand over the top of his cup as his host gestured as if to refill it. “No. I’ve had too much already, and hearing what you’ve got to say I’m regretting I had any.” He looked Lucius Scipio in level in the eye. “You’re mad, you know that?”

Scipio’s brilliant smile flashed in amusement. “You’re not the first to say that, and doubtless you won’t be the last.” He coolly assessed how well-tended the garden was these days (not being an avid horticulturalist he had hardly bothered to look at it since his return from Spain a month earlier) and let his young guest come to grips with his proposal.

They were sat either side of a stone table in the middle of Scipio’s peristyle garden and had been for just under an hour. Calenus had enjoyed the Falernian wine and the fruit Scipio’s steward had provided for them; what was harder to digest was what Scipio was suggesting. He had only met the man for the first time that morning, in fact he had only realized the man existed that morning; Calenus had no great interest in the patriciate, after all, it had got his father killed. His father, another Quintus Fufius Calenus, had been that tribune of the plebs who had opposed the dominant faction in the Senate during the build up to the Civil War, and had died for his pains in what was generously described as a ‘riot’. The younger Quintus Fufius Calenus had no wish to emulate his father and had avoided drawing attention to himself. What Scipio was asking him to do ran completely counter to that.

“Well?” asked Scipio, his survey of the garden over, he returned his gaze to the quiet face of his guest. ‘Quiet’ was the best way to describe it, for it was like its owner in that it was entirely unremarkable and would easily have gone unnoticed in a crowd. The eyes were brown, the hair likewise, and the lips thin and tensely set. He was not yet twenty and barely had to shave. Impressionable. The brown eyes looked into Scipio’s own impenetrably dark blue and a seasoned reader of men, Scipio knew what the answer would be.

“I’m not sure.”

Calenus licked his lips and awaited what he expected to be either a sigh of disappointment or (and, even though he had known Scipio a matter of hours, he guessed far more likely) vitriolic outburst of supreme annoyance. Instead he got neither. Scipio rested his left arm on the back of his chair, and with his right hand selected a red apple from the platter Aristander, the house steward, had laid out for them. He seemed to be studying it even more closely than he had examined the garden, his eyes never left it; and as he spoke what had been a mild day for February seemed suddenly to grow colder.

“All I ask is for you to think about it. To think about the searing pain as the blade pierced his flesh. To think about the indescribable agony as it twisted, as it tore nerve, organ, and sinew. To think about the blood that ran from the wound, the bubbling sickly-sweet river of it that poured out and fell onto the unforgiving stone at his feet. To think about the terror that was on your father’s face as he died; and how his killers, the so-called ‘great men’ of Rome, their foul deed done and witnessed by all, ran from the scene, only to be given succour and acclamations of thanks from a cringing Senate. How these self-same men died and are revered as heroes, leaving in their place arrogant, ambitious, sons; whilst your father is eternally condemned as a traitor and his name, your name, lies in blood-stained tatters by the roadside."

Scipio lifted his face and Calenus saw something in it that made him want to recoil, to run; something that was dark and terrible and that thirsted for revenge.

Then it softened, and so too did Scipio’s voice soften from the searing tones he had spoken in before.

“Think about it.”

And Calenus thought of his father, a man he could barely remember, and of whose name he had been ashamed. And he was angry; angry with his father’s murderers, angry with those who had shielded them, but most of all angry with himself. There was a throb in his voice as he replied “I will. I promise you.”

Placing his long elegant hands on his thighs Scipio nodded. “Good.” Then a conciliatory smile. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll have to be leaving. I have an appointment to keep. Stay as long as you like though, just ask Aristander if you want anything. We’ll talk again soon.”

He rose and then paused momentarily as he made sure his pristine toga was draped perfectly over his tall well-knit frame. Satisfied, he was about to shake hands with Calenus when he realized that he still held the apple. This time a wry smile as he tossed it to the younger man. His guest decided to let his curiosity get the better of him: “Who is your appointment with, if you don’t mind me asking?”

Scipio flashed that brilliant smile again as he answered.

“I’ve got to see a man about some chariots.”