Sword of Rome(23)

When they reached the house he was still lost in thought, and the cry of welcome from Olivia came as a shock.

‘Valerius! Why did you not warn me you were coming? I wasn’t even sure you were alive.’

When he saw his sister looking so well he felt like laughing. There had been days when he had held her in his arms and been certain she wouldn’t survive the hour. The last time he had seen her the shadow of the illness still lay upon her features, but now her cheeks showed a country housewife’s glow and she had put on weight. Olivia had always scoffed at the pampered life of a Roman lady, even when she had been forced to live it. Since the deaths of her husband and their father she had become her own woman, and that woman looked at home in a simple homespun stola with flour dust on her face. She was flanked by her ancient servants, Granta and Cronus, their father’s freedmen who looked after the actual running of the estate, though what that amounted to these days he had no idea.

Belatedly he became aware of another presence, hanging back in the shadows. Olivia saw his look, and with an almost imperceptible nod invited the man forward. He was of mid-height, perhaps a hand span shorter than Valerius, but with the angular hardness that comes with life outdoors, and truculent, unyielding eyes that said he was ready to deal with whatever came at him.

‘Lupergos.’ Olivia’s voice cut across Valerius’s thoughts and demanded he look at her. When he did, the message he received dared him to challenge what she said next. ‘He is my – our – estate manager.’

Valerius left it just long enough to send an equally unmistakable reply before he nodded. Lupergos bowed and backed away. In an instant the tension drained from the faces of the two freedmen and they approached with the traditional traveller’s welcome of a bowl and cloth, a loaf and a flagon of pure water from the well behind the house. Olivia invited him to stay the night and he saw the flash of surprise on Serpentius’s face when he agreed. The villa was a sprawling place laid out on a single level, and Valerius remembered it fondly. The last time he had been here much of the paint had been peeling and the plaster cracked, but as Olivia led him to his room he was surprised to see fresh, glowing white everywhere, and signs of repairs to floor and ceiling. Their eyes met, and there was that challenge again, but he said nothing. He found a fresh set of clothes that fitted and joined her in the atrium. She’d always been fascinated by his travels and she listened for over an hour as he spoke of the vast, forbidding landscapes of southern Armenia, the heat-seared deserts of Arabia where the wind could strip a man’s flesh, and the jewelled seas and emerald cliffs of the Hispanic coast. Somehow, there was no time to discuss the estate’s domestic arrangements.

Eventually, he said: ‘I think I will inspect the estate. Perhaps Lupergos would like to join me.’

He saw the momentary flare of concern in her eyes, followed by the acknowledgement that this moment could not be avoided. ‘Of course. If you wait by the barn, I will fetch him.’

Lupergos appeared a few minutes later and without a word they headed off up the valley to the south slope, past the rows of grape vines to where the oldest olive trees grew. This was Valerius’s land; all this fertile red earth in the miles-wide bowl between the hills. He loved it, and it was part of him, just as he was part of it. But he felt no particular desire to work it. In truth, since his father’s death it had become Olivia’s and he was content with that. He had his own life to live, and it wasn’t anchored to the soil, however welcoming. Below the earth lay countless cubits of finest quality marble that made the Emperor’s bounty he had carried from Gaul look insignificant, but he was the only man alive who knew it and that was the way it would stay. To get to it, they would have to strip the estate bare, tear the trees and the vines from the ground by their roots and gouge great canyons in this beautiful land. No man would say that was Gaius Valerius Verrens’ legacy. No matter what it cost.

As they reached the olives, Lupergos began to talk unhurriedly in a thick north Etrurian brogue that marked his class as much as the rustic clothes he wore. ‘I will cut the maturest trees back, but not too much because they produce the finest oil. The oldest of them are only ten years from the end of their useful life. We must plant their replacements now, unless we want a drop in production.’

‘You think the slope will take it?’ Valerius spoke for the first time.

Lupergos gave a tight-lipped nod. ‘The land is rich and we are better supplied with water than any of our neighbours.’

He had more to say as they turned east through the most productive vines and Valerius was impressed by the Etruscan’s grasp of land husbandry and viniculture. Eventually, they set off for home, but almost as if they’d planned it that way, they stopped and faced each other before they were within sight of the villa.