Chapter Eleven: Noble Men

Part 1 – The Kong Miao



He had been watching the young man for several minutes before he decided what to do about him.

The Kong Miao received anywhere from dozens to hundreds of visitors a day, of course. As the primary shrine of Confucianism, it was an object of reverence to the faithful and one of curiosity to the tourists. Mencius saw no end of visitors when he wandered the peaceful, immaculately manicured grounds of the shrine. Some got a polite nod from him, but he could grant them no more of his attention than that. The High Priest, as one would expect, was a very busy man.

So why should this one young man have arrested his attention this morning? Granted, the fellow was good-looking, but Mencius’ tastes had never run in that direction. The young man looked quintessentially Roman: tall, dark-featured, with jet-black hair in close-cropped curls. Clean-shaven, as was the fashion amongst Romans and had been for centuries. (Mencius, in contrast, wore a long, nearly snow-white beard.)

Perhaps it was how he was dressed that caught Mencius’ attention—or rather, how he wasn’t dressed. The young man, though obviously Roman, was not togate, wearing only a simple white tunic with no stripe that would indicate he held rank as a patrician or even a knight. Yet the way he held himself, back straight, broad shoulders thrown back, and especially with that muscular left arm of his held bent at a right angle, as if to support the folds of a toga, suggested that he was used to the dress of a high-ranking Roman—or had been.

Most of the mysteries the high priest wrested with would never be solved in his lifetime. The one standing before him, in contrast, should be relatively easy to resolve. That prospect—the unusual chance to deal with a relatively straightforward enigma for a change—made up Mencius’ mind. He walked over to the young man.

“Greetings, my young friend,” he said in Latin. “Welcome to the Kong Miao. My name is Mencius.”

The young man turned from his study of the Hall of Great Perfection and regarded the older man with piercing blue-green eyes. He blinked in surprise, then bowed low.

<I am honoured to make your acquaintance,> the young man said in Mencius’ native Chinese. He straightened. <I confess that I did not expect to meet the High Priest on my pilgrimage. This is an unexpected and most welcome honour.>

Mencius smiled beneath his neatly-trimmed beard, pleased not only by the young man’s most polite and proper greeting, but also to hear his native tongue spoken by one who was obviously not of that lineage. Even centuries later, some Romans still never let his people forget that they were descended from escaped slaves. Mencius could tell that this young Roman, however, held no such prejudices.

“You are Confucian, I take it?” Mencius continued in Latin, implicitly inviting his new acquaintance to speak in his own native tongue; it was only proper, since Mencius had initiated the conversation. The high priest gestured towards the Hall of Great Perfection, the centre of the shrine and the heart of Confucianism, and he and his new companion turned and casually strolled towards it.

“Yes, as my father was before me, and his father before him,” the young man said. “Forgive me, I forgot to introduce myself. I am Lucius Rutullus Lepidus.”

Now it was Mencius’ turn to blink in surprise. “Your name seems very familiar to me, Lucius Rutullus Lepidus, but I cannot place it,” he prompted his young companion.



And there it was, in the young man’s suddenly tightened expression, the slight sigh of sorrow and exasperation that escaped his lips. It told Mencius everything he needed to know before Lucius Rutullus filled in the details.

“The Rutullii have served Rome in general and Casear in particular for centuries,” he said proudly. Then he pressed his lips together and seemed to sag, just a little. “But the family has… fallen on hard times. Too many sons and not enough money or land to go around is how my grandfather, rest his soul, used to put it.”

Mencius nodded. He now recalled hearing of the fate of this young man’s family, one of the oldest and most Patrician, descended, legend had it, from Remus himself. Nothing dramatic had occurred—no sudden fall from grace—just a gradual erosion, over time, of the family fortune as it was split repeatedly amongst each new generation, until there was, now, no fortune to be split. Once the Rutullii had been senators, praetors, consuls, and provincial governors. And now…?

“I grew up in the Subura,” the young man told him in a matter-of-fact tone even though he had just admitted his once-noble family now lived in the seething tenements of Rome amongst the lowest of the low—the “head count”, as they were called. “That’s where I learned Chinese, and a few other languages to boot, from the neighbours in our insula.”

Again Mencius nodded. As a young priest he had ministered to those in the dense, crowded apartment blocks of Rome and Antium, where people of different nationalities and tongues lived cheek-by-jowl beside and on top of one another. That this young man’s speech and bearing indicated that he still clung to his Patrician background was remarkable. But Mencius said nothing; he knew that the young man’s pilgrimage was infused with purpose, especially since it must have been exorbitantly expensive for him to undertake, given his limited circumstances. All this talk was leading to something.

Lucius Rutullus stopped just outside the door to the Hall of Great Perfection. His eyes sought the priest’s, and his brow furrowed.

“All the master’s teachings,” Lucius said, “have, as I have been given to understand it, one purpose: to show us our place in the world, and how to accept it and live properly within that place. But I no longer know my place!” the young man cried, his arms spread in exasperation as he finally revealed what had brought him on this pilgrimage. He shook his head and looked at the ground. “I should, by rights, be planning my political career. I should be looking forward to entering the Senate in ten years, on my thirtieth birthday, as is my due. But I’ll never qualify. I should be holding my head high amongst my fellow Patricians. Instead I mingle with the head count.”

He glanced up at Mencius, who was listening to him attentively. “Do not misunderstand me, revered sir. I don’t look down upon those I live with and deal with every day. They’re my friends and neighbours; of the few Patricians I know, most can’t be bothered to acknowledge my mere existence. It’s just…” Again his spread his hands in exasperation, then let them fall and slap uselessly against his thighs. “I try to live up to the Confucian ideal, to be a noble man—not one through birth and blood, though I have that, but through thought and deed. But it’s hard, master. Very hard.”

“Is that all that troubles you, my young friend?” Mencius asked after a brief, respectful pause.

“No,’ Lucius Rutullus said quietly. He glanced at the high, gabled roof of the Hall of Great Perfection and sighed. “There’s… well, there’s a girl.”

“Ah,” Mencius said. “Permit me to hazard a guess: she’s a Patrician.”

“Yes,” Lucius admitted with a dejected nod.

“But her family’s circumstances are… different from yours,” Mencius said delicately.

“Oh, like night and day!” Lucius said with a bitter laugh. “Her name is Claudia Pulchra.”

Mencius couldn’t contain his reaction. He inhaled through his teeth. The Claudii were one of Rome’s highest-ranking Patrician families. The young woman Lucius Rutullus was referring to was the daughter of Marcus Claudius Pulcher, who had been Consul twice and was currently one of two men holding the esteemed office of Censor. From all reports, she lived up to the family’s cognomen, which meant “beautiful”, in both appearance and personality. Such was her reputation, and that of her family, that even the High Priest of the Kong Miao in Antium knew of her. But then, Mencius was a prudent man as well as a holy one, and ensured he kept one ear to the ground regarding the goings-on in the capital.

“You aim high, Lucius Rutullus,” he remarked.

“Too high,” the young man said morosely. “She’s engaged to another man.”

“Forgive me for asking, my young friend, but how did you ever chance to meet her? I would assume you move in very different circles.”

Lucuis Rutullus smiled grimly and nodded. “Quite so. But, strangely, we shared the same pedagogue. An esteemed Japanese tutor, Akiro Matsugane.”

Mencius’ snow-white brows rose high on his head. “Now I know why your name is familiar to me, Lucius Rutullus Lepidus, and not just because of your esteemed heritage. Akiro Matsugane is one of my oldest friends. Our duties—mine here in Antium, his in Rome—keep us apart too much, unfortunately. But the last time I visited him in Rome… it must be, oh, four years ago—he mentioned you to me.”

“Did he?” Lucius said in mild surprise.

“Of course,” Mencius said, grinning now. “Did you never wonder, Lucius Rutullus, why one of the most esteemed teachers in Rome accepted you as a student though you could not afford to pay his fees? Which, as I keep telling him, I consider ridiculously exorbitant,” he added with the good-natured disdain one long-time friend often had for another.

“I always thought it was because he felt sorry for me,” Lucius said with a shrug.

Mencius snorted derisively, a most un-priest-like sound. “Does Akiro Matsugane strike you as the soft-hearted type?”

“No,” Lucius said, his hands rubbing together unconsciously as he remembered the many times his stern tutor had administered a leather strap to them in discipline. “Far from it.”

Mencius nodded. “He took you in because he saw great potential in you, Lucius Rutullus. Potential that would have been wasted otherwise. Potential that you have not yet fulfilled. But you are young, and there is all the time in the world for you to find your way.”

“But how, Master?” Lucius asked. “As a civil servant? I’ll be old and grey—no offence—before I climb that cumbersome ladder high enough to achieve anything even close to my family’s former prominence. And I don’t have a head for business either, I can tell you that. Normally, a man of my age would join Rome’s Legions and make a name for himself there, but we’ve been at peace for decades now.”

Lucius laughed briefly. “Would you believe I even tried acting? Yes, a Patrician Rutullus, on stage!” he said in response to Mencius’ surprised reaction. “There were two thespians living in our insula, and they convinced me to give it a try. They made quite a fuss over me.” He grimaced. “Too much of a fuss, if you catch my meaning, which is why it didn’t last.”

“You must be patient, my young friend,” Mencius said when the young man grew silent. “The world has a way of putting things in our path that we need. We usually regard them as obstacles, when in fact they are opportunities. And sometimes they are difficult to recognize as either. The Master said…”

But Mencius got no further, for from behind him, within the sanctity of the Hall of Great Perfection, a loud, keening wail pierced the air. Before the old priest had even turned his head toward the sound, Lucius Rutullus was running past him towards its source.

There, beneath the many richly-decorated pillars, the dark red walls, the high roof, was the central altar. At one side of the large, intricately-carved marble block knelt the source of the cry Mencius and Lucius Rutullus—and several other priests, now converging on the altar—had heard. He was an old man, his clean-shaven head and snow-white beard giving him the appearance of a holy man, while his long green robe, decorated with colourful feathers of blue, yellow, and red,, made him resemble some exotic bird.

His hands shook even as they clung to the altar like a drowning man to some piece of flotsam. Another loud wail of anguish and rapture erupted from his weathered lips, followed by a stream of what could only be loud, reverent prayer spoken in a strange, guttural tongue. Tears streamed down his withered cheeks and moistened that long, white beard. Lucius was already beside the old man, his strong arm attempting to be a comforting presence on that elderly shoulder. Mencius caught up to his young acquaintance and knelt down beside the aged, distraught worshipper.

“My friend,” the High Priest said, then waited patiently for the old man to notice him and for his reverent wailing to cease. “You are most welcome to the house of Confucius,” he said reassuringly. “Be comforted—you are among friends. Might I ask who you are, and from where you hail?”

The old man only shook his head and muttered incoherently in his strange tongue. Exasperated, Mencius looked at the other priests standing nearby, as perplexed as he, to see if any of them understood the man.

“His name,“ Lucius Rutullus said, “is Itzcoatl. He’s Aztec”

Mencius and the other priests started in surprise, both at the information and that this young Roman had somehow understood it. Rome was a mosaic of the various cultures of the continent, that was true, but the Aztec Empire had long been a closed book. One of the few things Romans knew about that mysterious land, home to a particularly fundamentalist strain of Buddhism, was that travel from it was forbidden to its inhabitants--on pain of death. Very few Aztecs made the hazardous journey to Roman lands, though evidently this man had—and, it seemed, so had at least one resident of the insula where Lucius Rutullus had grown up. The young man turned to the old man and spoke to him gently in his strange, mysterious language.

“He also says,” Lucius added, with no small amount of astonishment, “that he is a Confucian.”

With this remarkable declaration now translated, the old man broke down in tears yet again, leaving Lucius, Mencius, and the other priests staring at him in amazement and confusion.