Hero of Rome

by Douglas Jackson

  ‘What happened here?’ he demanded. ‘Where is your mistress?’

  ‘She is gone,’ the grey-haired woman cried. ‘They took her. They took everything. I hid in the apple store or they would have taken me as well. I—’

  ‘Who took her? When?’ he interrupted. When was more important than who but he needed all the information he could glean.

  ‘The soldiers. They were led by the tall one and had carts. Four. They took everything. They took Docca.’ She broke down, sobbing uncontrollably. Docca must be her husband, but Valerius didn’t have time for sympathy. He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her roughly.

  ‘When, and which direction did they take?’

  ‘Three hours ago. The Londinium road.’

  Valerius released her and she slumped to the floor. Three hours and perhaps an hour to catch up with them if he rode hard. There was still a chance. Whoever had taken Maeve could only move as fast as the carts carrying their booty. That meant two miles in an hour at most, so eight miles. He tried to visualize the road, looking for somewhere he could intercept the convoy. But he would need help.

  He lifted the woman to her feet. ‘Listen to me, Catia. You must go to the soldiers’ camp at Colonia. Ask for Julius, the centurion. This is what you must tell him.’

  He chose a place where the Londinium road crossed a narrow river about ten miles west of Colonia and concealed himself in a copse of nearby beech trees to wait. He’d avoided the road, but ridden hard across open country until he was certain he’d overtaken his quarry. Now all he could do was wait. And hope.

  The truth was that he had very little idea what would happen next. It seemed clear that the raid on Lucullus’s villa had something to do with the Trinovante’s business dealings, but what had prompted the drastic step and Lucullus’s even more drastic reaction was a mystery. All he knew for certain was that he must get Maeve back. Catia had said the man leading the raiders was a legionary, which meant that Valerius almost certainly outranked him. In that case, he would use his authority to have Maeve and the other prisoners freed. It might take some argument but it should be possible. On the other hand, the expedition could be a piece of private enterprise by one of Lucullus’s business rivals, or a partner he had cheated, who had hired the soldiers as enforcers to get their money back. When he turned it over in his mind this seemed less likely. They might show they had some legal right over Lucullus’s slaves, but not his daughter, and kidnap was a capital offence to be tried before the governor or his deputy.

  If it came to it, he would fight for her. But he couldn’t fight alone.

  As the minutes passed, the heavy silence mocked him. Nothing but the rustle of the trees, and they whispered that his quarry must have taken another road. After half an hour the horse twitched restlessly beneath him and he sensed its urge to move on, but moments later the creak of an unsprung ox cart brought him the warning he’d strained for. The urge to launch himself towards the sound was overwhelming, but he willed himself to stay motionless. Only when he could hear voices did he urge the mare forward and sweep her round to face them.

  The leader reined in sharply at the sight of the unexpected apparition blocking the road. He had just reached the crossing, with four riders at his back, and behind them Lucullus’s slaves walked disconsolately among the ox carts. A further six legionaries who had been marching in the rear recognized the threat and double-timed past the convoy to join the vanguard, leaving two to make sure the slaves didn’t run.

  Valerius scanned the carts for Maeve and was rewarded by a flash of chestnut-brown behind the second wagon. She had her head bowed and was partially obscured by the horseman in front of him. He wanted to shout out to let her know he’d come for her, but realized that drawing attention to her might place her in more danger. He bit his lip and waited, allowing the tribune’s uniform and his bearing to announce his authority. Thus far he’d ignored the leader of the soldiers.

  ‘You!’ The voice reverberated with disbelief and Valerius’s heart sank as he recognized it.

  Crespo.

  But all he could do was play the part he had created for himself – and buy time. This confrontation was all about power and rank and a legionary’s natural inclination to obey a command. He injected his words with a touch of parade-ground authority. ‘Centurion Crespo, you have exceeded your orders. Release the prisoners and I’ll escort them back to Colonia. Any dispute over the ownership of the slaves will be settled in the courts.’

  Crespo stared back at him, gimlet eyes glittering. He remembered the stinking awfulness of waking up on a Londinium dung heap, and the humiliation he had endured in the hut at the Silurian hill fort. This man had been responsible for both. Unfortunately, he was also a tribune of Rome, which meant Crespo had to curb his natural inclination towards violent retribution. Yet something wasn’t right here.

  ‘You seem to be all on your own, pretty boy. I wonder whose orders you have … if you have any at all,’ he said thoughtfully.

  Valerius ignored the insult. ‘I don’t need orders, Crespo. This uniform carries the governor’s authority and flouting that authority will see you hung from a cross.’

  Crespo nudged his mount forward and reached towards the belt at his waist. Valerius’s right hand shadowed the move, hovering over his sword hilt. The Sicilian laughed and carefully retrieved the scroll bearing his mandate.

  ‘My instructions, tribune. Centurion Crespo is ordered to secure any or all of the property of Lucullus, augustalis of Colonia, on the instructions of the procurator, Catus Decianus. I think you’ll find that includes his slaves. If you don’t have something official countermanding my order, I’ll ask you to step aside and I’ll be on my way.’ The thin lips twitched in a humourless smile and his voice fell to a whisper. ‘And we’ll have our reckoning another time. Because, believe me, pretty boy, there will be a reckoning.’

  ‘His property doesn’t include his daughter.’ Valerius said it loudly enough for the men at Crespo’s back to hear. If he could plant a seed of doubt there was a chance. Crespo’s style of leadership was unlikely to have made him popular and if the soldiers who followed him could be swayed … But Crespo was a predator, with a predator’s instinct for any weakness. Something in the way Valerius spoke awoke the wolf in him. He heard it howl and the smile transformed into a grin of anticipation.

  ‘His daughter. So that’s it. You didn’t come all this way to round up a few dirty old slaves, did you, pretty boy? You came for the priest’s daughter. Full of surprises, you are. Here was me thinking you only liked boys. Vettius, bring the Celt bitch up here.’

  One of the riders turned and rode to the second cart, where he untied the rope holding Maeve and used it to pull her, stumbling, to the flank of Crespo’s horse. Valerius felt raw anger flare within him when he saw the bruise on her cheek and the half-shut eye. He reached for the rope but Crespo flicked it away from him.

  ‘Not so fast, pretty boy.’ He leaned forward and swept Maeve effortlessly on to the saddle in front of him. ‘What’s she worth to you?’

  Valerius froze. He understood that Crespo was trying to goad him into a fight. The other soldiers edged closer and their hard eyes never left him. If he reacted now against odds of a dozen or so to one he might take a few of them with him, but probably not Crespo. And if he died, Crespo couldn’t afford any witnesses to the murder of a Roman tribune, so Maeve would die too.

  ‘What’s she worth?’ the centurion repeated. As his captive struggled in his arms he ran his hands over her shoulders, breasts and legs. ‘Not bad. I think I might have her for myself tonight. And after I’ve had her Vettius and his Mules can have her too. Then she’ll only be fit for the dogs, so maybe we’ll give her back to you.’

  Valerius went cold and his mind moved beyond anger to that place where only Crespo’s blood would pay for the indignities Maeve was suffering. Her eyes pleaded with him to act. His heart told him to launch himself across the gap and ram his sword point beneath Crespo’s chin and up into his
brain. His head said wait.

  Thunder filled his ears and he wondered if it was the thunder the British champions heard when they threw themselves against the Roman shields. Perhaps the thunder of Taranis that sent them to a warrior’s death without fear of what waited beyond. But it was only the thunder of twenty galloping horses.

  Valerius didn’t look round. He heard the ragged snorts of mounts that had been ridden hard and knew that behind him was now lined up a troop of Bela’s Thracian cavalry wing. Crespo’s expression didn’t change but the men around him backed away from the long cavalry spears.

  ‘Five hundred denarii.’

  Crespo frowned.

  ‘I’ll give you five hundred denarii,’ Valerius repeated. ‘Take it, or we take her and you get nothing.’

  He saw Crespo’s eyes counting the spears behind him. Maeve sat very still with her head bowed and he couldn’t read what was in her eyes. Eventually the centurion gave a sharp laugh. He knew he’d been outmanoeuvred but saw no sense in crying over it. There’d be another time. He allowed her to slip to the ground. ‘You heard him, five hundred denarii for the British slut,’ he shouted. ‘If he doesn’t pay, his honour is mine and I will bury it in my latrine where it belongs. March, you lazy bastards. We’ve wasted enough time here.’

  Once the little convoy had moved out of sight Valerius dismounted and helped Maeve to her feet. She stood motionless as he cut the rope from her wrists, revealing a glistening band of bloody flesh. Her eyes had the unseeing stare so familiar in legionaries who had fought one battle too many.

  On the way back to Colonia she sat on the saddle in front of him and at one point her body began to shake uncontrollably. She was still shaking when they reached the townhouse her father had once owned. He knew he should tell her about Lucullus’s death but feared the news would break her already fragile link with reality. Falco’s wife was waiting for them and she cleaned and bandaged Maeve’s wounds before putting her in Valerius’s bed.

  While she slept, he sent word to Cearan – and waited.

  XXIV

  When Maeve finally woke two days later Valerius sensed a deep change in her that he didn’t have the wit to understand or the understanding to approach. She emerged from the bedroom pale and exhausted, still wearing the torn blue dress, with dark shadows around both eyes. Her strength visibly returned with each spoonful of the thin soup the militia commander’s wife had recommended, but she would not meet his gaze and spent hours staring into the distance as if she were searching for something.

  Valerius fretted at his inability to reach her and in the evening he could bear no more. He took her in his arms and held her, deciding that now was the time to tell her of her father’s death. But as he breathed in the sweet, jasmine scent of her hair, she stiffened and began to struggle in his grasp, squirming and scratching, forcing him to release her. When she was free she backed away with a look of disgust that twisted her beauty into a parody of itself.

  ‘Maeve,’ he pleaded.

  She shook her head wordlessly and a high-pitched keening came from her throat. With a single movement she took the front of her dress in two hands and ripped it to the waist. ‘This is what you want,’ she hissed, finally finding a voice that was as cracked and broken as one of the pots the despoilers had dropped in her father’s atrium. ‘You want these.’ She took the twin bounty of her breasts in her hands and offered them to him. ‘You paid for them. You paid for me.’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ she spat. ‘You made a slave of me. You bought me from that animal … and … now … you … own … me.’ With the last five words she tore the dress still further and she was naked, her lovely body still bearing the marks of her ordeal, the scratches and the bruises and the invisible stains of Crespo’s assault. ‘So take me. Isn’t that what Romans do with their slaves? Take them whenever it suits them. Rut with them wherever it takes their fancy.’

  She was sobbing now, but sobs of life-consuming fury.

  ‘Your father…’ he tried to say.

  ‘Is dead or he would have come for me. He would have saved me or died in the attempt, not watched as some foul-breathed pig violated and ruined me.’ She shook her head and he knew she was remembering each moment of her shame. ‘When I saw you in the roadway I knew I was safe. I knew that you would fight for me and that if you died I would die by your side. I would have been glad. Instead, you watched while my honour was stripped from me. Coward,’ she snarled, and she threw herself at him, nails tearing at his eyes. ‘Coward. Coward. Coward.’

  Valerius fought her off, grabbing the flailing arms and avoiding the teeth snapping at his face. Her head whipped back and forward as if she were possessed but she was still weak and the savagery of her fury burned out in a few minutes. She went limp in his arms. He picked up her slight body and carried her back to his bed, where he sat in the darkness, listening to the sound of her fractured breathing.

  At one point during the night she said quietly: ‘You may sell me again if you wish, for I do not want to be a burden to you. But you must call me by another name. I am no longer Maeve of the Trinovantes. I am a slave.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ he said, because he could think of nothing else to say.

  ‘You would not understand,’ she replied. ‘You are a Roman.’

  Next day, in the misty stillness of the dawn Valerius stood with Falco as the little merchant’s body was carried from the villa to the burial ground beyond Colonia where a square pit, ten paces by ten, had been dug. Maeve was still too weak to attend and did not hear the bard sing his praises or see the things he had loved placed around him by the people he had loved. A few treasures, at least, had survived Crespo’s ravages. Cearan was first, carrying an amphora of the Calenian wine Lucullus had often shared with Valerius; then Cearan’s wife, Aenid, with an intricate gold torc discovered behind a loose brick in Lucullus’s storeroom; a slim, dark-haired waif of a girl Valerius didn’t recognize carefully placed a gaming board and pieces beside his body; his finest clothes and favourite stool; and finally his father’s sword, which he had kept hidden for seventeen years.

  Once, a priest would have said the sacred words and made the sacrifices, but the druids had all been driven from the east long ago. Instead, an elder from the settlement by Cunobelin’s farm performed the rites, and as he did so Valerius allowed his eyes to wander over the mourners.

  Apart from Falco, who was here to represent Colonia’s council, the Roman merchants and traders who had profited from Lucullus had discovered more pressing business today. But the Celt’s Trinovante cousins had gathered to honour his passing to the Otherworld. They stood in a compact mass, with Cearan at their head, tall, sombre figures, broad-chested and proud. Their dark eyes sent Valerius an unmistakable message as he stood, slightly apart, with Falco. It said they may have been long conquered but they still knew how to hate. He remembered Lucullus’s words on the night they were drunk together: there are men, great men, proud warriors, who live in the ruins of their burned-out huts and watch their children starve, because they once had the temerity to stand up for what was theirs. Now he was seeing those men with his own eyes. The heirs of Caratacus. Unlike the compliant Celts who frequented Colonia, they wore long belted tunics over tight trews and had thick plaid cloaks draped across their shoulders. He could see how their hands itched for their weapons and their war shields. All they needed to make them an army were their spears and a leader.

  ‘Will there be trouble?’ he asked the militia commander.

  Falco shook his head. ‘I don’t believe so. Cearan is no fool and he has influence among the Trinovantes as well as the Iceni. They are angry, as they have a right to be, but they are not organized.’

  Valerius wondered if that was true, but Falco knew his business.

  ‘When do you leave for Glevum?’ the wine merchant asked.

  ‘My orders came through this morning. The First cohort will march in a week and I’ll be with them.’

  ‘And Rome?’

>   ‘I’ll kick my heels for another month in Londinium. It doesn’t seem to matter so much now.’

  ‘Have dinner with us on Wednesday, then. Just the old soldiers, Corvinus and the like. No Petronius, on my honour. How is she?’

  He thought for a moment. How to describe the indescribable? ‘Changed.’

  Falco shook his head. ‘That man is a monster.’

  ‘He promised me a reckoning and I’ve vowed to fulfil that promise.’

  Falco placed a hand on his arm. ‘Do not waste yourself pursuing Crespo. Go back to Rome and make a new life. Forget him.’

  Valerius watched the final planks being placed over Lucullus’s grave. Crespo was not the kind of man you could forget. If you did you were likely to end up in a river with a knife in your throat. But perhaps Falco was right. Everything had changed. All the certainties in his life had vanished with Maeve’s love. Her reaction had shocked him, somehow turned him inside out. Since then, he had swung between extremes of pain and anger, shame and regret. How could she believe he was a coward? He was a Roman tribune and he had saved her life. If he had been a Briton they would both be dead now, and Crespo would still be in Londinium with her father’s treasures. In the end he was faced with the certainty that he had lost her. So, yes, he would return to Rome and leave the procurator and Crespo to continue destroying other lives. He shook his head. It was time to go home.

  Before he left the burial ground, he sought out Cearan. He knew the Iceni would not want to meet him but also that he was too wellmannered to refuse. He discovered the tall noble talking seriously with a group of Trinovante elders and Valerius again thought how kingly he looked. Cearan needed no golden circlet to prove his lineage; it was written in the aristocratic planes of his face and in the quiet way he wielded his power. If the gods had been kinder here was the true leader of the Iceni.