Popular moralists thundered against the ease of divorce. You saw them on every street corner in Rome; hairy Cynics fulminating against lax morality. High on their list of the reprehensible were shameless women who cast off the restraints of husbands. A few words said in front of seven witnesses – Take your things and go – and a marriage was ended. Yet who would dare say those words to Caesar? The lowest slave could flee to a temple, claim the right of asylum. What priest would grant that to the wife of Caesar?
There had been nothing for it but to try and escape. Born of desperation, her plan had been simple. Accompanied just by her cousin, Fadillus, his servant, and her maid, she would head west in a fast carriage. Diplomata purloined from the imperial chancery would provide a change of horses at each Post House. They would outrun any pursuit. When they reached a crossroads marked on the map at a place called Servitium, she would have to decide her next move.
Ahead, in the Alps, was Corvinus. She had met the equestrian just the once, as they had passed at a bend on a lonely upland road. Should you come this way again, my lady, accept my hospitality. My name is Marcus Julius Corvinus, and these wild mountains are mine. He had given her a brooch; garnet-studded gold in the shape of a raven. Off to the south lay Dalmatia, the province governed by Claudius Julianus. She knew him well; decent and honourable, a lifelong friend of Gordian.
To entrust her future to either was a gamble. It was said that Corvinus was no better than a brigand. Only a foolish girl, the simpering heroine of a Greek romance, would mistake a passing invitation for a binding oath. What would be more natural than a brigand ransoming a female hostage back to her family? And what of Claudius Julianus? He was a quiet, unassuming man. Would he find the courage to defy Maximinus? The province of Dalmatia had no legions. Easier for a man of quies to be swayed by the proximity of the northern armies, and hand her over to a vengeful husband, find some way to salve his own conscience later. Men were good at that.
In the event, the decision had been taken from her by the unravelling of her plan. No sooner had they left Sirmium than they saw the detritus left by Maximinus’ troopers: broken straps, shed hipposandals, empty flasks. Before the first town – a miserable place called Saldis set in a marsh – there were lame and foundered horses and dismounted stragglers in the road. Worse still, messengers spurred foam-flecked mounts past them in both directions. She knew little of armies on the march. It had never occurred to her that the road would not be empty; all Maximinus’ men long gone. They could not continue west to Servitium. Now their only option was south towards Dalmatia. They had to get off the main road, and they had to do so without being seen.
Fadillus had found the answer. Although, as her tutor, her cousin was her legal guardian, he had never questioned any of her decisions about her property, or anything else. She had not thought of him as a man of much substance. Now, like Mark Antony, or some other Roman of old, in this crisis he had cast off his sloth and begun to show an unexpected resource.
They had changed horses at the Post House in Saldis, and rattled out to the west. As soon as they were out of sight of the town, and at a moment when there were no prying eyes, Fadillus’ servant, Vertiscus, had jumped down, and set off back to town on foot, a wallet full of coins hidden inside his tunic. It was easier for a slave to slip unremarked back into Saldis. Fadillus had driven on until the road was bordered by woods. Checking that no one was watching, he had turned off into the trees, not halting until the vehicle could go no further, and they were deep in the forest.
They had passed the night all together in the carriage. The noises of the wildwood were unsettling; the whispering of the leaves, the creak of boughs, the scuttle and cries of predators and prey. Iunia Fadilla was frightened, for a long time unable to sleep.
Fadillus had woken her well before dawn. He stripped everything of value from the carriage, hid it with brushwood, turned the horses loose. When the carriage was found, it would be assumed that they were dead. As he said, the empire was full of tombstones bearing the words interfectus a latronibus; killed by bandits.
Through the dark night, he led his cousin and her maid south-east, across country. They had clambered over drystone walls, pushed through hedges, splashed across swampy meadows, waded small streams. Once a covey of partridges had clattered up. Nothing else betrayed their nocturnal wandering. Eventually, bedraggled and exhausted, they had come to the backroad that ran south from Saldis towards the mountains. Covered in filth, unrecognizable, they had sat on the verge, like mendicant devotees of a god that had failed them.
In the grey half-light of the false dawn, the first wayfarer went by. A countryman on a donkey, he had two chickens and a sack tied behind him. Not long after, he was followed by a ramshackle cart piled with vegetables. Other rustics passed, all heading to the town. Iunia Fadilla had never known that peasants were about so early. One or two grunted greetings, most ignored the itinerants.
After sunrise, as if summoned into existence by the light, a wagon had come from the town. On the driver’s seat was a man in a hooded cloak, a stout staff propped at his side. He peered closely at them, then reined in the two mules. Fadillus helped his cousin and the maid into the back, then climbed up beside Vertiscus. Together they had set off into the unknown.
For sixteen days, they had plodded on, across the plains, then into the foothills, and finally the mountains. Iunia Fadilla remembered country journeys of her childhood, trips to the Bay of Naples, or distant Apulia. Straight, white, well-made roads, at intervals the pillars marking the entrances to grand estates. Long, tree-lined drives, at their end, shimmering in the distance, elegant villas, with fountains, statues, shaded walkways. Villages of plastered houses, paved streets, and bustling market places. This bleak countryside held no resemblance. Set back on hills, hard of approach, the farms were small and square, built of unmortared stone, forbidding like tiny fortresses. Many had watchtowers. The hamlets were no better. Blank walls crowded winding alleys. At their centre, a muddy square, overlooked by squalid, rough-hewn shrines, which even the most rustic of gods would be ashamed to inhabit.
As a girl from a senatorial house in Rome, Iunia Fadilla had been brought up with a certain understanding of those who lived in the countryside. Hard work and fresh air made them strong and healthy. The frugality of their life, and their distance from the corruption of the city, made them honest. Antique virtue was to be found in their fields and sylvan glades. Her memories of the estates of her father and his friends tallied with this vision. Bailiffs standing in the sunshine before the main house, flanked by lines of farmworkers; all smiling, blowing kisses. Young girls offering the posies of flowers they had gathered. The songs of the vintage, the laughter as her father took off his shoes, and, barefoot, helped tread the grapes. Dinners by torchlight in the vineyards, the music and dancing.
The countrymen of the upland borders of Pannonia and Dalmatia were a different species. Twisted and gnarled, tattoos showing through the dirt, they regarded the interlopers with silent suspicion. At the first two villages, they denied they had any food to spare. What the taxman had not taken, the soldiers had stolen. In the other villages, there was nothing but spelt and millet for sale. Iunia Fadilla had eaten spelt-cake at her marriage to Maximus. It was not a good omen. Nowhere was there an inn, no one offered them a bed for the night.
They slept in the wagon, went hungry. Up in the mountains, the cold wind sang in her ears. The road was flanked by slopes topped with freestanding outcrops of grey rock, like tattered sentinels. The tallest peaks were snow-capped, darkened by the clouds hanging on their shoulders.
Few of those they had met on the road acknowledged their existence. Those that did spoke in some barbaric tongue, or near incomprehensible Latin. Two encounters had brought sheer terror. First, they had seen a small patrol of cavalry in the distance, cantering north. Thank the gods, the country there had been broken, and they had turned off the road, and hidden in a copse. The troopers had not stopped, but scanned the verges as they passed.
Just when Fadillus had said it was safe, although before they started to rejoin the road, a lone rider had galloped back, and vanished to the south.
The other meeting had been unavoidable, and far worse. Four horsemen had appeared, not uniformed, but reasonably mounted, and all armed. A drop on one side, a sheer cliff on the other; nowhere to hide. Interfectus a latronibus. Many travellers just vanished. The riders were dressed as civilians, but, as they drew near, the ornaments on their belts, the way they moved, had revealed them as soldiers. Deserters most likely. Freed from discipline, as cruel as wolves. Outlaws denied fire and water. Their leader had spoken to Fadillus. Questioned on who he had seen on the road, Fadillus had answered truthfully. There had been no reason to lie. Iunia Fadilla and her maid had sat very still in the back of the wagon. Despite their accumulated dirt, they had drawn the attention of the other riders. Fadillus had said Iunia Fadilla was his wife. An awful pause, before the leader had said the maid could entertain him and his men. Fadillus had protested that she was his property. The leader had said he could have a wineskin for her trouble. Iunia Fadilla got down from the wagon, and the men climbed up. Standing by the mules, she had tried to close her ears to the noises from the bed of the wagon. When the men had finished, they swung back into the saddle. The leader thanked Fadillus with mock courtesy, and apologized for his memory. Now he recalled that he had no wine to give. He turned his horse, and led his tatterdemalion troop away to the north.
Restuta had been silent, stony-faced since. But the life of a slave girl was hard; it bred resilience. The leader of the latrones had said that there was a town ahead, a place of reasonable size, with four inns, and a bath house. Iunia Fadilla hoped it might go some way to restoring her maid’s spirits.
Bistua Nova was set in a wide plain, ringed by great, hump-backed mountains. Beneath the notched skyline, pale green grassland and white rock showed against the dark green of the pine forests. Vertiscus walked, holding the halters of the mules, and Fadillus kept his boot on the footbrake, as they inched the wagon down the steep incline.
The first two inns could not have looked less inviting. The third, on the crossroads in the centre of town, appeared somewhat better. The mules stabled, and the wagon chained in the yard, Fadillus took lodgings. Told that the fires of the town bath house were not alight, he ordered water heated in the kitchens and a hip tub brought up to the room. He sat downstairs drinking in the common room with Vertiscus, while the women bathed.
The water turned black as Restuta washed her mistress.
‘I am sorry for what happened.’
‘It is of no importance,’ Restuta said. ‘Women are born to suffer and endure.’
Iunia Fadilla said nothing.
‘You know that as well as any.’
Iunia Fadilla felt a flash of anger at the girl’s presumption, then had to fight back tears.
‘Let me dry you,’ Restuta said.
‘No, I can dry myself. Get in the tub.’
The towel, although threadbare, was clean. Iunia Fadilla watched as Restuta undressed. The girl was thin, but beautiful. Certainly as beautiful as Iunia Fadilla’s vain friend Perpetua. A turn of the stars, an accident of birth, and Restuta could have been the toast of society in Rome, rich, young poets begging her favours, rather than a slave girl, with no choice what man took her. Gordian was right: either the gods did not exist, or they did not care.
Fadillus was enough his old self to demand fresh water when it was his turn to bathe. When the men came downstairs to eat, it did not look as if Vertiscus had bothered.
The innkeeper’s wife served them. The mutton could have been more tender, and there were bits in the bread that crunched in your teeth, but both were delicious. The wine was fierce and warming. Iunia Fadilla could not recall a meal she had enjoyed more. She ate and drank more than a respectable matron should.
Full, and a little tipsy, they retired upstairs. Iunia Fadilla felt uncomfortable. There was one room, with one big bed. She and Fadillus would take the bed, there were straw mattresses on the floor for the servants. Her embarrassment was ridiculous; for nights on end they had all bedded down in the back of the wagon. In her shift, she slipped under the covers. She fell asleep wondering what it would be like if Fadillus drowsily rolled over, and made love to her. A half-remembered line of poetry: the servants listening as Hector mounted Andromache.
She woke with a start in the dead hours of the night. The door was open, Vertiscus standing over them.
‘There are soldiers. They are searching the inns at the far end of town.’
In something close to panic, she pulled on her tunic and cloak, grabbed one of the two bundles of her meagre belongings.
‘Which direction did they come from?’ Fadillus was tense, but controlled.
‘The north.’
‘Then they are looking for us.’
‘The wagon is unchained, the mules harnessed. We must go.’
‘No. It cannot outrun men on horseback. Vertiscus, lead them off down the road to the west.’ Fadillus wrapped Restuta in Iunia Fadilla’s other cloak. ‘The girl goes with you.’
There was no time for farewells. They clattered down the stairs, out into the starlit yard.
‘Wait there.’ Fadillus pointed Iunia Fadilla to a shadowed corner by the dung heap.
Lights were showing behind the shutters above them.
The two slaves climbed up onto the driver’s seat. Fadillus unbolted the gate, hauled it open.
Vertiscus shook up the reins, cracked the whip.
As the wagon squealed out into the road, Fadillus peered around the gatepost.
A shout in the distance. Other voices took it up.
The sounds of the wagon turning at the crossroads, rattling away.
Iunia Fadilla felt an almost overpowering need to relieve herself. She cursed her weakness.
The drumming of horses’ hooves, and the jingle of equipment grew louder, then receded, as the troopers raced after the wagon.
‘Now!’ Fadillus hissed.
Clutching her bundle, Iunia Fadilla went over to him.
‘We do not have long. We must get clear of the town.’
Taking her elbow, he guided her out into the street.
They ran to the crossroads, and plunged down the road heading east.
The houses fell away behind them, but soon her lungs were scorching, and she could not run any further. Fadillus dragged her off the road, up a slope, and into the cover of some trees.
‘Rest here a moment, then we will go on.’
And so it was, as the stars wheeled above them, they resumed their hapless odyssey.
CHAPTER 11
Moesia Inferior
The Banks of the Danube, Four Days before the Ides of April, AD238
At this point the river was wide, almost a mile, and the northern shore was nothing but a low, dark line. Honoratus ordered the signal made to bring the envoys across.
What was he doing here? A man who had cast down one Emperor, installed another on the throne, stuck here at the edge of the world.
Honoratus pushed such thoughts aside. There was time for a final inspection. The troops were arrayed in a great crescent around the tribunal. In the centre were five thousand infantry, legionaries and auxiliaries, their shields and helmet crests uncovered, their armour burnished and gleaming. On each wing stood five hundred cavalry, horses groomed and tack polished. Mounted senior officers flanked the tribunal. More normally they would stand behind Honoratus on the platform itself, but as governor he embodied the majesty of Rome, and thought splendid solitude more imposing. The army made a bold demonstration of the disciplined strength of Rome. That was just as well, Honoratus had stripped the frontier of the province bare to gather nearly half of all his forces here outside the walls of the town of Durostorum.
The barbarians should be impressed. Military might, like everything else, had to be openly paraded before their eyes; abstract ideas were beyond them. Honoratus, however, was a good judge of character, o
f his own, as well as that of others. He accepted that his approval of the formal observation of rank and its attendant ceremonies was a weakness, one he perceived stemmed from his lack of assurance about the impression that he made on the world. Dignified parades, allied to his good looks and charm, had always served to screen his uncertainties. The command of Delphic Apollo, Know yourself, was imprinted in his soul.
Honoratus climbed the steps to the lofty tribunal, just a lone interpreter at his heel. He settled himself on the ivory chair of his high office. The standards were massed behind him – the golden eagles, images of the Augustus and Caesar, plaques showing the names of the units picked out in gold letters – all held aloft and displayed on poles sheathed in silver.
The big warship had put out from the far bank. Its broad, arrowhead wake, and the pools where its oars had cut the water, were the only marks on the glassy surface of the Danube. Sitting very still – a governor did not gawp around like a yokel – Honoratus let his eyes take in the view: the reed beds, the marshes, the whole pestiferous hinterland of this river at the edge of the world. Gods below, he hated this place.
The galley was approaching the near bank. As Honoratus watched, it turned, and began to edge, stern on, towards the jetty. As governor, he commanded the Classis Moesiaca, and had summoned the trireme Providentia, the flagship of the fleet, upriver from the sea. Nothing should be omitted that might overawe the barbarians.
The Providentia was made fast, and the boarding ramps run out.
Honoratus watched the barbarians disembark. There was Tharuaro, the high chief of the Tervingi Goths. On one side of him walked a priest, one of those they called a Gudja, on the other a young warrior Honoratus did not recognize. They were followed by three more Goths wearing the signs of royalty. Behind them came a dozen long-haired noblemen.
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