The Governor's Man: A Quintus Valerius Mystery

by Jacquie Rogers

  The Governor’s Man

  Jacquie Rogers

  © Jacquie Rogers 2021.

  Jacquie Rogers has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 2021 by Sharpe Books.

  For Peter,

  cheerleader and first reader.

  Table of Contents

  life is warfare, and a visit to a strange land...

  Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

  Prologue

  AD 224

  Roman Britannia

  The bitter day was dying. In the settling dusk, the messenger boy swaying on his stumbling horse could no longer make out the milestones set into the verges of the road. He was as tired as his mare, but forced himself to stay upright, searching in the easterly gloom for the pale limestone gateway of Cunetio. How many more days until he reached Londinium? He tried to remember what the clerk had told him, but all he could think of was thawing his numb feet at a tavern fire.

  The mare shied. The boy grasped the reins, pressing his feet reassuringly against her flanks. She was usually responsive to his signals, but now she stopped, refusing to walk further. He stroked her neck, murmuring into her ear. Still she would not budge. He dismounted to lead her on foot. There was a rustle to one side. He had time to wonder if an owl was swooping nearby when a sword struck him, taking his head off in a single blow.

  Two men had been waiting in hiding. The taller, dressed in a fine cloak dyed an expensive bright blue, signalled to his companion to retrieve their horses while he crouched down to look at the detached head. He slid the boy’s mouth open, placed something on the boy’s tongue, and gently pushed the jaws shut.

  ‘No idea who that is.’

  ‘Did you expect to know him?’

  The tall man shrugged. The other man, dark face twisted in the fading light, handed him the reins of a handsome roan, and picked up the head to launch it spinning into the trees. The taller man moved to a hawthorn tree on the verge. Then both remounted, the slighter with economy, the taller with practised grace. The fine wool of the tall man’s cloak slid easily over his shoulders as he pulled the roan’s head round. They set off west, leaving the headless trunk soaking blood into the gravel.

  The boy’s horse nudged the sprawling body, shivering at the raw smell of death.

  Chapter One

  Rome, two months earlier

  Two mud-spattered riders, one an officer in his early thirties, the other a young slave, dismounted at the gates of the Castra Peregrina, headquarters of the Roman secret service. Frumentarius Quintus Valerius handed his reins to his shivering groom.

  ‘Get the horses stabled, Gnaeus; I’m going home first. I’ll be back later to report to the Commander.’

  Quintus shrugged off his own fatigue. He did not notice his slave’s ashen face as the man took the plodding animals around to the stables.

  Quintus walked across the city, up the Quirinal to his family home. The Valerii had lived here time out of mind. It was a venerable old house, the embodiment of their status as an ancient Roman family, but today the house seemed unusually quiet as Quintus banged on the front door. His elderly steward Silenus opened promptly, bowing with a look of surprise on his face.

  ‘Sir, welcome home! We didn’t know when to expect you, that is the mistress didn’t …’ The man trailed off, as Quintus looked past him into a deserted atrium. Completely empty of furniture, lamps, not even a household slave in sight. It was dark and cold in the room. At this time of day there ought at least to be someone lighting the oil lamps and candles.

  A door opened.

  ‘Brother!’ A young woman, petite and dark-haired, dashed across to him, crocus-yellow palla trailing.

  ‘Lucilla!’

  She flung her arms around him. ‘Come into the salon. The hypocaust isn’t lit but Silenus brought in braziers.’

  He allowed her to drag him into a large dimly-lit room, where Lucilla’s husband, tall and quiet, was waiting.

  ‘Justin? Why are you here? Is my mother with you?’ Quintus glanced round, dreading the mournful chill that trailed his mother into any gathering. And where was his wife, Calpurnia? It was unlike her to miss the chance to act the Roman society matron.

  ’No, just we two. I heard from the Castra you were expected. We wanted to be here to welcome you back,’ said his brother-in-law, standing to grasp his arm in greeting.

  Justin and Quintus had both joined the Praetorian Guard at sixteen. They became firm friends. A couple of years later they were joined by Quintus’s younger brother, Flavius Valerius, and the three of them had been posted as junior officers in the army of Emperor Septimius Severus to serve in his Caledonian campaigns. When Quintus returned from Britannia after months of injury, he found his sister hero-worshipping the quiet young Praetorian. His mother made Lucilla and Justin wait years; she had hoped for a more prestigious match for her only daughter than a career army officer from Etruria, without patrons or suitable connections. But in the end the despised Justin became a relief to the dowager when the family lost almost everything; he was welcome then to take Lucilla away to his modest estate.

  Lucilla was fidgeting round the room.

  ‘My dear, we must tell him,’ said her husband calmly.

  ‘Tell me what? What’s going on?’ Quintus brushed down his uniform and sat on one of the two remaining couches in the room.

  Lucilla also sat, taking his hand and stroking it. She was the only person in the world he would accept this intimacy from.

  ‘Calpurnia …’ her voice trailed off. Quintus stiffened. He should have guessed that this had something to do with his wife. Justin lifted a heavy scroll of papyrus off a small bronze side-table, and handed the papers over to Quintus in silence. Quintus unrolled the paper in the pool of light from a nearby candelabra, and squinted to make out the official words.

  Divortium …remancipatio… retentio dotis …

  The document was signed by seven witnesses, as the law of divorce required. His wife had kept the part of her dowry allowed to a divorcing adultress. At the end was appended a vicious little note in Calpurnia’s own hand: I’m keeping the baby. It’s not yours, of course. When it’s born it will be the legitimate heir of my new husband. You never wanted children anyway, did you? I don’t think you ever really wanted a wife.

  Perhaps he hadn’t, not after Britannia. The marriage to Calpurnia was his mother’s project, a pathetic attempt to shore up the family’s status after his father and brother died.

  Lucilla was watching him, worry in her eyes. ‘Say something, Quintus.’

  ‘There’s nothing to say. I suppose she took the household slaves and the rest of the furniture with her?’

  Lucilla nodded. ‘Not Silenus - we have offered him a home with us.’

  The steward edged into the room.

  ’Sir…’

  Quintus smiled tightly at the old man, and forced himself to look round the room a final time.

  ’Sell the house, Justin. Please. Send the proceeds to Mother. Tell her I hope it’s some compensation for having such a disappointing son.’

  He stood up and left through the darkening atrium. Soft steps rushed after him. He twisted round, catching his sister up into his arms. She was crying.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Lucilla. It’s the right thing for all of us.’

  ‘But where will you go, Quintus?’

  He gave a short unhappy laugh. ‘Wherever the Emperor decides I am needed.’

  She touched his face.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Quintus. About Calpurnia, the baby, your home. I wish we could go back to how
things used to be.’

  ‘That was another world, before I went to war in Britannia -- before Father and Flavius were lost.’

  Justin broke the silence as he came into the room and took his wife’s hand.

  Lucilla said, ‘One day, my dearest Quintus, you will discover you still have a heart, and find you can let people back into your life. Till that happens, you’ll always have a home with Justin and me. Don’t forget us.’ She turned to Justin.

  Quintus left the house quietly before he had to look at their faces again.

  The Castra gateway guards saluted as Quintus passed under the imposing marble portico and headed straight to the Principia. His mind was on his most recent mission: Palaestina, again. Dust, zealots, and the constant rumble of uprisings. That province was never truly secure. On this trip Quintus had been hard put to choose which sect was the more troublesome, the Jews or the Christians. He expected he and his stator Gnaeus would be posted back east again after their upcoming leave.

  The commandant raised his eyes from his paperwork as Quintus entered the room. An administrator sat at a small table to one side making notes of the meeting.

  ’Sit, Frumentarius Valerius. I’ll keep this brief.’

  Quintus sat, grateful for brevity. They were on professional rather than cordial terms, the commandant of the Frumentariate and his most experienced investigator. Quintus expected nothing more; it derived from the miasma of scandal enveloping his family since his father had been driven out of the Senate. He got on with his missions without question, did his duty, went where he was sent.

  The commandant picked up a paper.

  ‘The Governor in Tyre has sent in his praises, Quintus Valerius. Job well done, as always. So I’ll ask you again if you will reconsider my standing offer of promotion. Your career would benefit, and you could spend more time at home…’

  More time bearing his mother’s reproaches at his lack of will to climb the slippery political pole to restore the family’s fortunes? More opportunity to regret the end of his barren marriage, the loss of the old house on the Quirinal? More chance to listen to the well-meaning platitudes of his father’s ancient friends and experience the downright avoidance of his former Praetorian colleagues?

  He shuddered. The commandant’s mouth twitched.

  ‘No? Well, just submit your final report in the next few days and then take some leave.’

  The commandant paused. Quintus looked up to find his superior looking not unkindly at him. It seemed he would say more, had there been the slightest invitation. Quintus waited, and the moment passed.

  ‘Report back next month. The Saturnalia holiday will keep us quiet for a while; I’ll consider your next mission in January.’

  Quintus saluted, and turned to leave.

  ‘Oh, Quintus Valerius…’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Pack cold weather clothes.’

  ‘Germania, sir?’

  That might make an interesting break from the routine run of assignments; it had been long since Quintus had been to the German limes or seen the Rhenus.

  ‘You’ll be briefed later. I’ll just say you’ve been paid the compliment of being requested by name. Enjoy your leave, Frumentarius.’

  There it was again - a look almost of sympathy flashing across the commandant’s face. Quintus shrugged mentally, not caring. He called into the Duty Office to sign Gnaeus onto leave, and then walked blindly back to the sad shuttered house on the Quirinal to collect his few belongings.

  Chapter Two

  Britannia

  Quintus steadied the portable cabin desk with his knees as the naval packet from Gesiacorum lurched into the choppy estuary of the Tamesis. The scars on his right thigh itched; he ignored the irritation. The storm was easing, and the waves abated as the ship manoeuvred in from the open sea. He could hear the reverberating drumbeat on the deck keeping the sailors to a smart rowing pace.

  Nearly there.

  He spread out his commandant’s orders. It seemed that the Imperial Procurator in Rome was unhappy. When a mission came from the Imperial Procurator, it meant money was involved. The head of Rome’s financial administration was currently uneasy that the Emperor’s income from British mines had nose-dived: specifically, the dwindling silver extracted from the lead ore of the vast Vebriacum mines in south-west Britannia. Quintus read on.

  You are to be attached for the period of this mission to the staff of the Provincial Governor in Londinium, Gaius Trebonius, and are directed to undertake his orders as you would the Emperor’s. You will, of course, also report by Imperial messenger service direct to the Commander at Castra Peregrina.

  Gaius Trebonius. A name he knew well. Gaius had been his superior in the British Legion 11 Augusta, when Quintus had been attached as liaison to the Augusta from the Praetorian Guard. The Praetorian, with brand-new Centurion Quintus Valerius, was among the troops brought to Britannia by Septimius Severus to wage his Caledonian wars.

  So many years ago. Quintus tried to picture the youngster he had been then. Proud of being appointed to the Emperor’s bodyguard; full of his first service outside Italy. Happy to make a new friend in the Second Augusta, the burly young Tribune Gaius Trebonius. What a heedless puppy he had been back then!

  His old comrade’s name meant much more than that. It had been Gaius Trebonius, a skilled soldier, who had thrust his gladius up under the breastbone of a painted Pictish warrior during that hideous skirmish in the northern bogs, stopping the Caledonian dead. He who had pulled a poisoned spear out of Quintus’s thigh, and bound his own scarf rough and tight over the deep gash. Gaius had saved his life. And he was the only person who knew the whole truth of that dreadful day.

  After that had come Eboracum and the long process of healing.

  He dragged himself back out of the long tunnel of memory. Great Mithras! Why had he come back here, to this cold, dreary, backward place? He should have requested an alternative mission, asked to be sent somewhere - anywhere - else. He stood, stretched and took two long deep breaths, concentrating on letting the air trickle slowly out of his lungs. It was a trick he had learned in the east, a useful one.

  He was here because it was his duty to the Emperor. Because for thirteen years he had owed Gaius his life, and been unable to repay the debt. He wouldn’t think about the rest: the forced marches into mist and mountains north of the old Wall; the bitter hit-and-run fighting; his crippling wound; the agonising withdrawal from Caledonia. Then long days in hospital fighting a maze of nightmares and hallucinations brought on by the poison on the Pictish spear; then the girl in Eboracum. Most of all, he wanted to forget her: the girl, her bright eager face…

  Inevitably he stared blindly at the cabin walls, twisting the bronze ring with its little engraved owl on his fourth finger, seeing only the girl: her animated young face with its dusting of freckles turned to his, her loose fair hair lifted by the summer breeze as they stood on Eboracum’s walls, looking out across the grey-stoned northern city.

  He shook his head and sat back down at the desk and his papers.

  Let’s see…the mining estate at Vebriacum in the Mendip Hills was let to a businessman who extracted the minerals, mostly lead, and sent an agreed amount back to Rome. He retained the rest as profit. It could be a very lucrative business, and these mines had been a valuable source of income to the Imperial Estate since Britannia was first added to the Empire.

  The lessee was a Claudius Bulbo. Interesting cognomen, Bulbo. Quintus wondered fleetingly which part of his anatomy deserved to be called “swollen”. Bulbo had already been written to by Aradius Rufinus, the Provincial Procurator in Londinium, responsible for the financial affairs of the southern British province. But apparently Rome was not satisfied with Bulbo’s answer that the silver lodes were depleted. Never one to let go a source of income, the Imperial Procurator had called in Quintus to look into the matter.

  This was his mission in Britannia: to help Gaius Trebonius, and to satisfy the Imperial Procurator. Keep those two a
ims foremost in your mind, let the rest go.

  The rowers slowed as Quintus stepped out onto the deck. The northern sky glowered grey-white. It was a cold damp day, which did not surprise Quintus. He had not forgotten the deceptive British climate. The warm clothes hadn’t been for Germania after all. But Britannia was even darker, and with such an unpredictable climate it was probably the worst possible assignment this early in spring. He picked his way along the deck, bypassing the ship’s broken mast.

  ‘Sir, we’ll shortly be docking. A safe crossing after all, thanks to Neptune!’

  Quintus frowned at the shipmaster, just then remembering Gnaeus. The poor man was lying sweating and white-faced in a cot below the foredeck, one leg badly broken when the mast broke and dropped the mainsail during their storm-blighted voyage.

  ‘About my stator below - get him carried onto the dockside, would you, and I will arrange for the doctors at the army hospital to take care of him.’

  The Gaulish captain looked relieved. ‘Thank you sir, I wasn’t sure if you would need me to make the arrangements myself.’

  Quintus turned away, his mind passing onto the difficulty of getting another groom. Gnaeus had been at his side for many years, since shortly after Quintus had been transferred to the Castra Peregrina from the Praetorian Guard. They had suited each other: the quiet slave and his withdrawn master. It occurred now to Quintus that Gnaeus’ competence in travel arrangements would be hard to replace. The Gods only knew what kind of assistant would be available here in Britannia.

  The naval packet threaded its way through an increasing throng of cargo ships docked beside the wharfs on the north bank. New walls encircled the sprawling city, pale stone and red rag-tile towering above the muddy foreshore. Had he noticed the budding foundations as the departing galley had lifted oars to carry him back to Rome, long ago? He couldn’t remember.