Raising his head he looked around the room, inspecting each face in the flickering light. Suddenly he frowned, for the one person he had hoped to see was absent. Young Quintus Cornelius was there, in the uniform of a military tribune, his face like the others covered in a sheen of sweat, but the boy’s father, Aulus Cornelius Macedonicus, had not answered the summons, even though he had returned to Italy from Spain. What of the bonds they had sworn as children, sealing them in blood, oaths renewed through years of friendship; that they would always attend upon each other in any hour of need or celebration?
Nothing counted as much as the birth of a firstborn child, quite possibly a son, especially for a man who had been married without issue for nearly twenty years, but it was more than that. His greatest friend and staunchest political ally, absent from Rome for two years, had not come to aid the patrician cause at a time when he and his class were under threat, when a real possibility existed that a conflict might break out between the rival factions seeking to control the power of the Roman State. To treat Lucius so was a grave breach of obligation, made more so by the help that the perpetrator had received in pursuit of his own ambitions. Aulus would never have been given command in Spain if Lucius Falerius had not used all his prestige, and marshalled all his adherents in the Senate, to secure the appointment. Yet the beneficiary, Rome’s most successful soldier, declined to appear at a moment when his mere presence might tip what was a very delicate balance. With the nagging thought that his friend was less committed to the cause than he, and had no care for the effect his non-appearance had on wavering senators, the timing of this absence smacked of a deliberate insult.