Read Online After Rome by Morgan Llywelyn - Free Book Online

Mediterranean hillside. He had drunk the sour liquid without really tasting it, while trying to block out the banal babble of the men around him. No one was saying anything important. No one ever said anything important.
    Tied to a weathered stone hitching post outside, the mare had waited patiently in the rain.
    At last Cadogan could no longer put off the moment. He had ridden through the streets at a walk, but even so, reached home sooner than he wanted.
    Like a jewel set in its setting, the house where he was born stood against a backdrop of dark cedars. They provided a dramatic contrast to red-tile roofs and gleaming white walls. In a style introduced by the Romans, the main body of the house was composed of rectangular blocks enclosing a hollow square. The principal rooms opened onto the central court, known as an atrium, which was open to the sky and provided light and air to the interior. The exterior walls of the house had few windows and none at the front, thus eliminating street noise.
    The private residence of the chief magistrate presented a deliberately blank face to visitors.
    Bypassing the formal entrance at the side, Cadogan rode around to the servants’ wing and the stables beyond. Whatever normal life remained in his father’s house was to be found in the stables. Spirited horses and fragrant hay and rowdy stableboys laughing at bawdy jokes. Kikero, a splendid rooster with russet head and iridescent blue-green plumage on his back and wings, strutting around the place lording it over his harem of hens.
    Vintrex was standing at the gate of the stable yard. He and his steward were discussing the proposed placement of Domitia’s tomb. They looked up as Cadogan rode toward them. The two men were a study in contrasts. Vintrex, the carefully fed and highly educated product of ten generations of selective Romanization, had a noble forehead and refined features. But the years were not being kind to him. His gums were drawing back from his teeth; his flesh was sagging on his bones.
    Esoros, on the other hand, possessed the wedge-shaped nose and deep eyes of a true Celt. His was a face that knew how to endure. Vintrex had once said of him, “My steward remembers everything and forgives nothing,” but held him in the highest regard—a compliment Esoros returned by trying to speak like his master. The precise diction of the court and the forum sounded strange from his lips.
    As Cadogan approached them, Vintrex had glowered at his son. “Who gave you permission to ride that ancient beast? She’s an embarrassment.”
    â€œShe’s mine, Father, I don’t need anyone’s permission to ride her. She may not be young anymore, but she’s still the best horse in the stable.”
    â€œDispose of her!” Vintrex demanded. “I don’t want to see her on my property again!” A vein throbbed visibly in his temple.
    Cadogan had dismounted and handed the reins to a stableboy. “Take good care of her,” he said under his breath, then turned to face his father.
    The conversation that followed was not pleasant.
    When Vintrex was told there was no white marble for the tomb, he was furious. He had berated his son in front of Esoros. “Did you even go to the right stonecutters? I seriously doubt it, I know a lie when I hear one. If you had any initiative you would have found the marble I sent you for, and at a decent price, too. But no; you prefer to drift through life with your nose in books. Wasting your time rereading dead words. How can I be proud of a feckless overgrown boy? What good are you to me at all?”
    Stung by injustice, Cadogan had lost his own temper. Old wounds, the natural detritus of the relationship between father and son, were opened afresh. In the rising heat of their quarrel Cadogan eventually blamed his father for his mother’s death. Vintrex countered by claiming Domitia’s poor health dated from Cadogan’s birth. The quarrel