The Horse Changer
Authors: Craig Smith
‘Messala Corvinus said it best of the opportunist, Quintus Dellius: “He was the Horse Changer of our civil war.” In the course of a year, Dellius served Dolabella, then Cassius, and finally Mark Antony…’
Seneca the Elder
From
Suasoriae
1.7 (trans. C. Smith)
Also by Craig Smith:
The Whisper of Leaves
Cold Rain
Every Dark Place
The Painted Messiah
The Blood Lance
MYRMIDON
Rotterdam House
116 Quayside
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 3DY
First published in the United Kingdom by Myrmidon 2015
Copyright © Craig Smith 2015
Craig Smith has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-910183-13-7
Set in 11/14pt Sabon by Reality Premedia Services, Pvt. Ltd
Printed in the UK by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CRO 4YY
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written consent of the publishers.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Frederick Williams:
hoi didaskaloi
– the (beautiful) teachers.
I was fifteen when Charles Blaney enticed me to open the
Iliad
, eighteen when Don Jennermann assigned all the extant tragedies of ancient Greece, and thirty-six when Rick Williams walked with me through Plato’s
Symposium
at the pace of six lines a day.
We like to say that our teachers make a difference in our lives, but the truth is only a select few have that kind of impact. I have pursued any number of intellectual passions in my life, but I always come back to the abiding mysteries of antiquity for consolation. For that I have three men to thank. First they were teachers then they were friends, constant and true.
CRAIG SMITH lives with his wife, Martha, in Lucerne, Switzerland. A former university professor, he holds a doctorate in philosophy form the University of Southern Illinois.
The Painted Messiah
and
The Blood Lance
, the first of his novels to chronicle the exploits of T.K. Malloy, received international acclaim and have been translated across the globe in twelve languages.
In 2011, his novel
Cold Rain
was one of five titles shortlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for Best Thriller.
I
VIRTUOUS TEMPERAMENT
Tuscany: 49 BC
I was sixteen when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon and rode into Italy at the head of Legio XIII. I knew several of the young men in Tuscany who joined his auxiliaries and begged my father’s permission to enlist as well. He refused.
I was old enough, or so I thought, but my father possessed a farmer’s slow reckoning of time. He said I would be of more use to Caesar if I finished my education. I protested that Caesar needed me now, but my father assured me a man like Caesar would always have another battle waiting.
In the three years that followed, Caesar chased the senate out of Italy, routed the legions of Pompey Magnus in Spain and Greece, secured Egypt and sailed to Pontus on the Black Sea, where he defeated an enemy force on the very day he arrived, uttering in the aftermath of that battle the immortal words, ‘I came, I saw, I conquered.’ Then, when the last of the senate’s forces rallied in Numidia, Caesar sailed his wearied legions to Africa and, after a series of desperate battles, brought our great Civil War to its conclusion.
In the history of Rome, there had never been three more glorious years of war, or any general the equal of Julius Caesar. And all the while I sat in Tuscany adding summons and learning to parse Greek sentences.
When word came of Caesar’s victory in Africa, my wise father kissed my head and sent me to Rome with his blessing. I was nineteen. My eyes were good in those days, my feet swift, my hands strong. I had a heart brimming with ambition. Like a few thousand other young men of my stripe, I had learned from my early childhood onwards to fight with a sword and hunt with a spear. I could box and wrestle with some skill and even had modest talents in archery. As for the art of horsemanship, I was unrivalled in all of Tuscany.
I was handsome in my youth, taller than most, with powerful shoulders and dusty brown locks. At seventy years of age, I still have broad shoulders and most of my height; the beautiful locks, however, have gone the way of all that is mortal. Judah, my secretary, smirks as I dictate this. It is always the same with young men: they can imagine any fate for themselves except old age and baldness. I was no different.
In Rome, I spent each morning for nearly a week in the vestibule of the house of Cornelius Dolabella. I had never met Dolabella, but my father enjoyed a long friendship with his great uncle, who was one of the lords of our province and the grand patriarch of the Cornelii. He had therefore instructed me to approach Dolabella before speaking to any other patrician. This seemed good advice. Dolabella, as everyone knew, was then a rising star in Caesar’s party, which happened to be the only viable political faction left in Rome. Dolabella was twenty-eight years old; in the old days that would have made him too young for command and certainly too young for a position of any importance in the government. In the world Julius Caesar had fashioned, Dolabella was a general of the legions. In fact, he had already been promised a consulship in another year or two.
To my thinking, no man could match Caesar’s accomplishments, and even with all my ambition I never imagined myself overtaking his glory, not if I had three lifetimes. But I thought I could hope for what Dolabella had accomplished. I decided all I had to do was observe his manner and conduct myself exactly as he did. Of course, I came to this dubious conclusion before I had ever set eyes on the man.
On the sixth morning I visited Dolabella’s house, the steward pointed to me; there were several of us waiting in the vestibule. I followed with some trepidation as he brought me through a splendid atrium then led me back through the house to the great man’s office.
Dolabella was at his desk but had turned away that he might vomit into a bucket, the latest of several profuse offerings, from what I could gather. A servant held the bucket for him and then wiped his lips with a damp cloth after he had finished. Dolabella’s secretary stood to the other side of his dominus, serenely indifferent to the stench in the room and of course the suffering of his master. When Dolabella finally sat upright again, or as upright as his misery allowed, he looked at me with a curiously indulgent smile. ‘Come in, come in, young man. Don’t be bashful. Step forward, let me have a better look at you.’
‘Quintus Dellius, from Tuscany,’ his secretary remarked. There was a warning tone in this, but Dolabella seemed not to notice.
‘From Tuscany. A country boy. I like that!’
The secretary interceded at once: ‘He carries a letter from your great uncle, Dominus.’
‘Oh.’ A moment of disappointment followed, and I naturally assumed my cause was lost. A sly smile followed, if only to see how I would react. ‘I thought you were breakfast.’ When I did not respond to this, he added, ‘Pity it isn’t so.’ His wet eyes rolled back as if he were about to faint; then he spun suddenly toward his bucket, but it was only for the sake of a few awful dry heaves. When he sat up again, Dolabella looked at me with vacant eyes, then at his secretary. The secretary, divining the problem, whispered, ‘Quintus Dellius from Tuscany.’
When Dolabella repeated this information, I found myself wondering at his sanity. ‘What is your business, Dellius?’ he asked cheerfully. ‘Selling horses or wine? I’ll wager it’s one or the other from a Tuscan eques.’
‘I have brought a letter of introduction from your uncle, Excellency.’
‘Yes, yes, of course you have. How is the old bandit? Well, I hope?’
‘Quite well, Excellency.’
‘And he encourages me to give you all my business, I expect?’
‘The letter is addressed to you, Excellency. I cannot guess what he encourages you to do.’
‘Come then. Bring it forward. You don’t expect me to walk in my condition, do you?’ This was apparently a joke, but I hardly dared get too close, for the stench emanating from that bucket was nearly enough to inspire my own vomiting. Oblivious to the odour, Dolabella waited in his chair until I had stepped up to the very edge of his desk. Only then did he reach out and take the thing.
I had in fact stolen a glimpse of the letter before it had been rolled up and sealed. It provided a glowing estimation of my potential, not false in any particular but neither was it very critical. Fifty years on, I still recall two of the choicest phrases: ‘…a promising public career ahead of him…’ and the capstone of the piece ‘…a young man of virtuous temperament…’
Dolabella broke the wax seal holding the letter and unrolled it. As he did this, he leaned to one side of his chair for the sake of an eye-watering fart. I glanced at the secretary, but he showed no reaction, not even to wince at the stench of it. As he read, I looked closely at Dolabella’s features; he was not nearly the beauty his stone portraits made him out to be. He had luxuriously curly hair as advertised, but that was the end of it. His body was too thick for his height, his face too puffy. And he was soft, as if he sat perpetually at his desk or too often rode in a litter.