Avenging Varus Part II

by R. W. Peake

  “Before we talk about anything else,” I began, once the other five men were in my private quarters, “we need to welcome one of our own to the Centurionate.” Without being told, Alex had already filled six cups of unwatered wine, not Falernian but a nice Chian, and I held mine up as I said, “To Quartus Hastatus Prior Titus Fabricius. And,” I then turned to another new man, “to Quartus Princeps Posterior Lucius Calpurnius, who we welcome from the Sixth Cohort.” The others raised their cups, which we quaffed, then I turned to the other business. Once everyone had retaken their seats, I began, “First, you can thank Alex here for what I’m about to tell you. I’m sure he’s not the only clerk who has a little bird in the Praetorium, but you’ll be among the first to know what’s going on with the 2nd and 14th, and how they lost so much of their baggage train and so many men.” I paused to take a sip, realizing that I had not talked this much at one time, then explained, “Germanicus made the decision to lighten the load on the fleet, given the issues he had sailing with all four Legions and their baggage, so he put Vitellius in command of marching west, skirting the Lacus Flavus, with the plan to pick them up when they reached the mouth of the Rhenus to sail upstream the rest of the way here. Or,” I amended, “that was his intention, but he apparently forgot about the tide and started the crossing at low tide. They were about halfway across when the tide came in, and since he had them still marching in their armor, a fair number of men were swept out to sea, along with hundreds of animals, and some wagons.”

  I stopped then, mostly due to the fact that the others were gasping in shock and making exclamations of dismay; it did not take long for that turn to anger, and it was Structus who asked, “Is Vitellius going to be punished for that?”

  I did not answer, looking instead to Alex, who, although he looked reluctant to do so, said, “I asked Lysander, but all he would say is that Germanicus hasn’t decided yet.”

  Gillo asked, “When do we get to return to Ubiorum?”

  This was something I could address, because along with the other Pili Priores, we had met with our Primus Pilus, Tiberius Sacrovir, who has been in that role for my entire time in the Legions, which at the time of this meeting was almost seven years.

  “We’re returning to Ubiorum and winter quarters in two days’ time,” I informed them, which, as I expected, unleashed a small celebration.

  Vetera has changed even in the relatively short time I have been with the 1st, but it is still nowhere near the size of Ubiorum, and while it was not appreciated much by the rankers, I know that most of the officers were thankful of the decision by first Caecina, then by Germanicus to restrict us to camp, albeit silently. This was the home camp for the 2nd and 14th, which meant that the dozen tavernae already had to be shared between the two Legions, always a chancy proposition; adding another six, especially with things being the way they were between those of us who marched with Caecina was a recipe for disaster.

  It also made me somewhat uneasy about what I was about to tell them, but again, I knew that it would be known within a watch.

  “The 5th and 21st are actually leaving tomorrow,” I said, yet somewhat surprisingly, all this elicited was some exchanged glances and murmurs that did not indicate feelings one way or another, but it was Fabricius who captured my personal feelings on the matter.

  “It’s probably for the best,” was how he put it, although he was frowning into his cup. “The gods know that if we’re together much longer, someone will say the wrong thing at the wrong time.”

  This was something that I, and I am sure the others, knew was the truth, but I was caught by an unexpected stab of sadness, because my first thought was of Lucius Carbo, a ranker who I had known all too briefly during my months with the Second Century.

  The memory of the man who had fallen during our fight with Arminius at the Long Bridges prompted me to say, without thinking about it, “And Carbo would have been one of them.” I did not mean it to be humorous, but it did elicit some laughter, because despite being in the Second, Carbo had been the most notorious brawler in the entire Cohort, but it was the thought of the man who was spiritual kin to the departed Carbo that prompted me to turn to Gillo, “And Pulcher would have been right there with him.”

  This moved the conversation back to what was still a topic of conversation from earlier in the season, and it was Gillo who joked, “He wasn’t the one who threw that bastard from the 15th over his tent.”

  As I am certain he expected, my former Optio’s jest was met with roars of laughter, and I confess that, while I normally do not like being the subject of laughter, in this case it was certainly warranted. My man Pulcher had gone after a ranker from the 15th who, along with his comrades, were jeering the Cohort as we entered the camp after we had been tasked with repairing the ditch surrounding an old camp. It had been half-filled with stagnant water, there had been the remains of several animals who had fallen in, and the stink from that and the mud had been particularly odious. And, as men are likely to do, the rankers of the 15th took great pleasure in reminding us of our collective stench as we marched by on the way to our Cohort area, and Pulcher was a handful of men who dropped their packs and launched themselves at the offenders. When I went to separate the combatants, one of the rankers from the 15th shoved me from behind, the result being that I lost my temper; although I did not mean to do so, because of my size and strength, when I grabbed the man by the front of his tunic, I lifted him several inches off the ground, and while I have no real memory of it, I apparently shook him in much the same way a dog does when it catches a rat. When Pilus Prior Pullus, which is how I thought of him at that time, showed up and intervened, he sent me, along with the rest of the Cohort on to our tents, while he handled what, even as angry as I was, I understood was a potentially serious offense. While he did smooth things over, at least at that moment, I suppose I should not have been surprised when I learned, less than a full watch later, that what I had done had grown in scale to the point that, according to “witnesses,” I not only lifted this hapless man off the ground, but with my left hand, I flung him bodily so high in the air, and so far that he cleared his tent and landed in the middle of the street on the opposite side. It should come as no surprise that, once I heard this outlandish tale, I did nothing to dispel it, and it provided for some amusing moments over the next few days; unfortunately, those days did not last. On this night, once the subject came up, I knew that it was inevitable that the resulting episode that had become known as “The Slaughter of the Dancing Faun” would come up, and while I readily participated in the back and forth among my comrades, it was an effort. Once things had settled back down, we spent a few more moments in idle talk, then I dismissed the other Centurions, and they filed out, laughing and talking about the coming march. Alex remained behind, and I could feel his eyes on me as I finished my cup of wine.

  “What?”

  “How are you?” Alex asked me, quietly enough, but I still felt his eyes on me, and when I did not reply immediately, I heard the awkwardness in his voice as he went on, “I could see that bringing all that up…bothered you.”

  He, I recall thinking, is getting to know me a bit too well, because he was right, and even now, well more than two years after it happened, I still feel a stab of pain whenever memories that involve Titus Pullus come up. That night, it was still barely more than three months earlier that the event that upended my world in almost every conceivable way had occurred, the day that my father was killed trying to save me.

  Outwardly, I tried to sound composed, but I also was sufficiently moved to answer honestly, “Yes, it did.” Only then did I look at him to ask, “How long did it take you to get over your father’s death?”

  As he is prone to do, Alex did not answer immediately, and I could see that he was considering the question before, finally, he said with a shake of his head, “I don’t know that you ever really get over it. It just…hurts less.” He gave a soft laugh, which puzzled me, until he explained, “Even now, I find myself wonde
ring what he would say about some problem I’m having.” When he looked up from his own cup to meet my gaze, he added, “And I feel the same way about your father. I have to catch myself from walking into your office and calling you by his name, even now.” I did not feel right telling him that he was not always successful, thinking of the times when he began a conversation with the word “Uncle”; it was as if he was divining my thoughts, finishing with a faint smile, “It doesn’t help that you’re so much like him.”

  As I am sure he hoped, this did elicit a chuckle from me. In the weeks and months since Titus Pullus fell in battle during our successful attempt to extract Segestes, once our relationship was revealed, the overwhelming reaction I suppose can best be described as a collective chagrin that so many men had missed what, in hindsight, were so many obvious similarities between us. Naturally, our respective size was impossible to miss, but it will be to my eternal shame that, when I first arrived as what those under the standard refer to as a paid man, I was so insufferably arrogant and full of hubris that I rejected even the mildest intimation that I shared anything other than that size with Titus Pullus. As time has passed, I realize that I still have not fully comprehended the scale of my stupidity by my initial refusal to acknowledge that I had anything to learn from the man who, at the time, was nothing more to me than a low-born brute with a famous name. I will also confess that it is a source of amusement to me, tinged with regret, that as so often happens between fathers and sons, it took a sound thrashing by Titus Pullus before I took the first step towards becoming the man I am today. At the time, to me, it was only a way to show him that I was someone to be reckoned with, both because of our mutual physical gifts and the fact that I had been very diligent in conducting my exercises on the Campus Martius of Mediolanum, where I was born to my mother and the man I had thought was my father. What I learned that night, in the bathhouse of Ubiorum, would be the first of many lessons I would learn from Titus Pullus, but if it is not the most painful to my heart, it was absolutely the most painful to my body. There is no way to describe it as anything other than a good, solid thrashing with the rudis, at the hands of my father, where I learned that sparring with other members of the equestrian order is no substitute, nor was it adequate preparation for facing a man as formidable as Titus Pullus. It was an eye-opening experience in many ways; not only was there the humiliation I felt at suffering what was the first defeat of my life in any sort of physical contest, but the fact that it was at the hands of the man who, in my own mind, I had created to be Nemesis made it doubly so. Swallowing my excessive and badly battered pride, I forced myself to approach Titus Pullus, who at that time was the Princeps Prior, and asked him to help me become better than I was, and this marked the first day of what would become our new relationship. By the time of his death, I now understand that I looked up to him in exactly the same way a son should look up to his father, and while there are still vestiges of anger that may not ever go away, and which tends to surface at inopportune moments, I still feel remorse for my behavior towards him. My feelings about my mother Giulia are more complex, but I am not ready to discuss those feelings now, not yet. Perhaps I never will be.

  As we had been told, the 5th and 21st departed the next morning, but a mark of the lingering tension was the absence of the men of either the 1st or the 20th to see them off, something that I had learned was an informal tradition after a campaign, when Legions returned to their permanent camp. It was late in the day, as I recall, that Alex knocked on my door, where I was lying on my cot, absorbed in reading what he and I now refer to as the “second box” of scrolls that my father left me. Never an avid reader before, I very quickly became one, which I suppose is understandable given that contained within those scrolls was everything about my father I might have learned if my mother had indeed done what she swore she was willing to do, and leave her father’s home and become what we call a camp wife. I am not particularly religious, but I will cross the river believing that the gods had a hand in the fact that these scrolls are even intact, because they had been aboard the Fourth Cohort’s Centurion’s wagon that was part of the baggage train for Caecina’s part of the army when we were returning to the Rhenus. First and foremost, the fact that our wagon was one of the roughly half that were not burned was fortuitous, but it did not escape ransacking. Once it was safe to send Alex, the other surviving clerks, and slaves to the train and retrieve what could be salvaged, he discovered that, while the box carrying them had been broken into and overturned, the scrolls themselves were strewn across the bed of the wagon, along with the other odds and ends that the Cherusci had no interest in taking. Some of them were slightly damaged, but they are all legible, and I have already begun the very laborious process of writing out another copy, with Alex’s help. The scroll I was reading when Alex arrived was describing my father’s first campaign, under the father of our Propraetor, which is another reason I recall this moment, understandable given what Alex said.

  “You’re being called to the Praetorium,” he told me, ignoring my grumbling at his intrusion.

  Which, I can assure you, ended the instant the words were out of his mouth, and I sat up very quickly, fully alert and the contents of the scroll temporarily forgotten.

  “The Praetorium?” I asked, more to stall than anything, since I heard him clearly enough. “Any idea why?”

  Alex shook his head, but he jerked a thumb over his shoulder and lowered his voice to inform me, “No, but I recognize your escort. He’s one of Germanicus’ slaves.”

  My mild concern immediately became a state of alarm, and I jumped to my feet, while Alex crossed the room to pick up my baltea, which he helped me put on, then handed me the vitus.

  “I wish I knew what this was about,” I muttered, but for some reason, Alex did not seem perturbed, which caused me to look at him suspiciously and demanding, “What do you know?”

  “Nothing!” He shook his head adamantly, a bit too much for my taste, and while I knew the slave was in the outer office with the other clerk Eumenis, I stood there, not moving and staring at him. “Gnaeus, I don’t know anything, I swear it!” Seeing that I was not convinced, he repeated, “I don’t know anything. But,” he added, “I seriously doubt that it’s anything bad.”

  Sensing that he was either being honest or he would not be moved to say anything more, I nodded and exited my private quarters, where I immediately recognized the slave, not needing to read the bronze placard hanging around his neck. He said nothing during our walk, which did not surprise me. When we arrived at the Praetorium and we were immediately waved through, I was in a bit of a quandary; when the duty Tribune, Albinus his name, stood and, without a word, turned and walked to the door leading to the private office of whoever was the ranking officer, I was almost beside myself with worry as I ran through all the possible reasons for this summons. That I was unable to think of anything, at least anything good, meant that I could feel my heart thudding in my ears, but I did not hesitate when Albinus, after knocking, opened the door and gestured for me to enter. From that moment, I behaved in the manner expected when a junior officer has been summoned to meet a superior, marching to the desk, seeing Germanicus seated there at the bottom of my vision as I kept my eyes on a spot far above his head. I am certain that I had never stopped and come to intente and saluted as crisply before as I did that day.

  “Quartus Pilus Prior Gnaeus Pullus, reporting to Propraetor Germanicus Julius Caesar as ordered, sir!” I rapped it out, and the sound of my voice actually encouraged me a bit, certain that there was no quaver or hesitance there.

  Germanicus remained seated, as was his prerogative, of course, but he did return my salute immediately, and I was reminded that he was not one of those officers who like to pretend to be involved in something else that requires his subordinate to stand there like a statue as a way to reinforce how much more important he is; if he did so, it was because he actually did have something more pressing at the moment. That, I thought, is because he is important,
and he does have a lot more things to do, so he can’t afford to waste time.

  “Stand easy, Pilus Prior,” he began, then chuckled as he added, “I’d rather not talk to a statue.”