“That you were old enough to take notice of?” Antonia pursued.
“Well, no…”
“I thought not. Well, I have. I even followed the legion with Appius for a year because I thought it was my duty; but I couldn’t bear it, and you couldn’t bear it, and no woman in her right mind could bear it.”
“I could bear it… with the man I love,” Aemelia said bravely.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Antonia said in a voice that was not unkind, but her eyes were heavy. “Flavius can give you an estate and servants and the… the life you know… to make a home for him to come back to.”
“Correus—”
“Correus can give you a mud hut on the frontier. And—and his mistress underfoot. He has one, did you know that?”
“He wouldn’t, if he had me,” Aemelia said with certainty.
Antonia bit her lip. She was damned if she would go into the question of marital duty with a girl not yet sixteen; how could she explain about sleeping with a man who had neither shaved nor bathed for weeks, and who woke up in the middle of the night, sweating and shouting orders to a nonexistent cohort.
“Have you ever seen a wounded soldier?” Antonia asked grimly.
“Well, of course.”
“No, I don’t mean passed one in the road. I mean, have you ever seen a man with a wound that’s old and rotten and stinks of infection? A man that you have to treat because the only surgeon available is out there somewhere on the field, treating your man’s soldiers, because your man told him to? A man who wants to climb into bed with you with a suppurating wound that smells like a sewer? A man who may die in your arms?”
Aemelia blanched, but she bit her lip and said, “I wouldn’t care.”
“Aemelia… child, listen to me. That is what you would have with Correus. Not a comfortable home, and a husband coming back to recuperate, with an estate physician to look after him. No. You’d have a hovel, a tent – and your handsome officer coming back in pieces, dripping blood, filthy. And what happens to you if he dies out there, and leaves you out there, with no one… and no place to go?”
“I wouldn’t care,” Aemelia said again, but she looked a little green. “I should want to be with him. I wouldn’t care,” she repeated.
Antonia lost her head. Not only for Flavius, her beloved Flavius, who wanted this pigheaded little moron, but for Aemelia, who didn’t know what she was talking about, who could no more stand up to a year on the frontier than she could sprout wings and fly. “Well, Correus would care,” she said. “He’s not my son, but he’s Appius’s, and the army is bred into him blood-deep, bone-deep, deeper than any woman is ever going to get. If he scuttled his career by making a dishonorable marriage, he’d never forgive you.”
Antonia turned on her heel and left, her sandals making a cold little whisper along the tile, and Aemelia put her head down on her arms and began to cry.
Helva, passing through the atrium a few minutes later, found her thus and sank down on the tile beside her chair and put her arms around her.
“My poor child, don’t cry.” Helva cuddled the shaking body to hers and ran a soothing hand over Aemelia’s dark curls. “There, then, you’re all right now. What is it?”
Aemelia turned and buried her head in Helva’s shoulder. “It’s Lady Antonia. She doesn’t… she said the most awful things about the army… and Correus… and…”
“It’s never easy, is it?” Helva said. “Women are never… never given the chance… Oh, dear Aphrodite, what I would not have given for the chance to marry a man for love!” She bowed her pale head down onto Aemelia’s lap and began to weep softly.
* * *
“Correus,” Appius Julianus was saying, his eyes not meeting his son’s and apparently counting the cracks in the plain buff plaster of his study wall, “you are going to have to do something about your mother.”
“What?” Correus gave his father a harried look and sank a few inches deeper into his chair.
“Your mother,” Appius said, keeping his voice bland and noncommittal, as if Helva were a leaking roof he felt constrained to remind his steward about. “For the past year she has gone about being tragic and noble and bemoaning her own lost youth every time she comes within earshot of young Aemelia, who is, I regret to say, a very susceptible girl.”
Correus groaned.
“Precisely. I have managed to keep Helva in line since before you were born,” Appius said thoughtfully, “but she has finally hit on a cause from which nothing is going to sway her, short of sending her away, which, since I have adopted my son by her, is unthinkable. However,” he looked his son in the eye, “now that you and Flavius are at home again, if somebody else doesn’t make her behave, I am very much afraid that Antonia is going to do it, and I don’t think I want to be around for that.”
“Mithras, no, sir!” The prospect of an all-out war between his mother and Lady Antonia promised all the amusement of an eruption of Mount Aetna. Correus shuddered. “I’ll talk to her.”
“Thank you,” Appius said. “I feel sure that you can make her see reason. Failing which, I am afraid you are going to have to speak rather brutally to Aemelia instead.”
Correus stood up. “I’ll deal with Mother,” he said grimly.
* * *
When Correus made his appearance in the atrium some two hours later, Aemelia had already called for her litter-bearers and gone home – not overly surprising after Correus had stalked in following his conversation with his father and said, “Mother, I want to talk to you, I’m sure Lady Aemelia will excuse us.” He had taken Helva by the arm and had dragged her bodily into the next room, where they had quarreled furiously.
Paulinus and Julia were ensconced in the atrium now, over the warmest part of the floor like a pair of cats, and Paulinus was teaching Julia to play latrunculi. Correus was still too irritated to be curious at his friend’s preference for his baby sister’s company.
“You look like Donar Hammerer on a bad day,” Paulinus said.
“I feel more like the hammered,” Correus said, flinging himself down in a chair. “I’ve been… uh, talking to my mother. I expect you could hear us,” he added. “They could probably hear us in Egypt.”
Julia looked up from the game board. “Aemelia heard you.”
“Great. Glorious. Purely wonderful. I suppose she also heard my mother call me an ungrateful, unfeeling son who was going to drive her to the grave?”
Julia nodded. “She was very upset for you.”
“Upset for me? Why in Hades isn’t she mad at me? That would be more to the point!”
“She thinks you’re being noble,” Julia said. “Are you?” She was beginning to look uncertain.
“No!” Correus shouted. “Typhon take her, and my mother, and your mother, and – women!” He glared at her, hurled himself out of his chair again, and disappeared into the garden, where it was raining.
“He’ll get wet.” Julia looked after him dubiously.
“Do him good,” Paulinus said. “You know, that would be a ghastly match. Aemelia should thank Juno she can’t marry him.”
Julia looked at him shyly. “I’m going to tell her that. I always thought I knew what I wanted, too.”
Paulinus gave her a thoughtful look, reached out to move a piece on the game board, and then put his hand over Julia’s instead.
* * *
Correus spent a highly unpleasant week telling himself that, having finally shouted his mother into an unwilling silence, there was no need to talk to Aemelia as well, though he knew that only an oaf would leave again without seeing her. He was wondering if he was going to have to go to her and hope her father didn’t set the dogs on him, when she finally reappeared for a visit with Julia. Correus told Julia flatly to go bill and coo with Paulinus (it had finally dawned on him that his friend seemed to have grown roots to his sister’s side) and he was lying in wait for Aemelia when she appeared.
“Correus—”
“Now listen to me,” he said
firmly, taking her damp cloak and handing it to a slave to dry before she could say anything. “We haven’t got much time, and I don’t want to make you unhappy. But you’ve simply got to think about marrying Flavius – or someone else – and stop thinking about me.”
“They can’t force me,” she said, holding her chin up.
“No, and you can’t marry me, either,” he said harshly. “If things were different… well, things would be different, but they’re not. I don’t want to hurt you, and I don’t want my brother hurt, either. And I can’t take much more of this,” he added.
“You can’t—”
“No, I can’t. Now look here—” He was beginning to feel exasperated and Aemelia was looking at him oddly. “I’m not some fairy-tale hero who can come and sweep you away. I’m the adopted son of a slave, with a very tenuous position in the world. And if you don’t realize that, I do!” He paused, got a grip on himself, and took her by the shoulders. He kissed her on the forehead. “You’re a sweet child. Now for all our sakes, marry my brother.”
Correus left her, still staring after him, white-faced, and bumped into Flavius in the doorway. “Go talk to her,” he growled, not even trying to keep his voice pleasant. “Read her poetry. Kiss her hand. I’m going riding.”
Flavius glared after him, his mouth set in a tight line, and then turned slowly to Aemelia, who was now huddled in a chair. Flavius sighed and pulled another chair up beside her. She turned to him, tears rolling down her cheeks, and he wiped them away gently with the back of his hand.
“You’d do better to have me, child,” Flavius said softly. “You see, there’s one thing you haven’t thought about.”
Aemelia looked at him blankly.
“I love you,” Flavius said, and she could read the truth of that in his face. “And Correus doesn’t.”
* * *
It was raining, a dark storm-rain with thunder in it, and the dripping courier waited impatiently at the outer door until his hammering should rouse someone in the sleeping household to come and let him in.
Old Philippos, the steward, in his night tunic with a cloak pulled about him wrong way out, and a lamp in his hand, grumbled his way across the cold marble floor. The furnace had been allowed to go out, a blatant piece of negligence.
“I’m coming, I’m coming. Stop that racket, can’t you?” Philippos unbarred the door and pulled it open. “What do you think you’re doing raising the house at this hour?”
The courier stepped past him and stood dripping in the doorway. “Orders. And I didn’t ride all this way in the rain to stand here nattering with you.” He held out two tablets closed with scarlet seals.
Philippos raised the lamp and squinted at them. He had been Appius’s steward long enough to recognize military orders. The courier held them out, inscription topmost. “Flavius Appius Julianus and… uh, Correus Appius Julianus,” he said. “These came into our camp tonight and the commandant chased me out here with ’em right off.” He wore a Praetorian Guards uniform under his wet cloak.
“They had another week of leave left,” Philippos said.
“Tell that to the Germans,” the courier said. “Not that I know anything, mind, but the dispatch rider said these came down from the Rhenus with a ‘priority’ on ’em. Looks like they’ve got their hands full up there.”
XIX A Face by Torchlight
“What’s gone wrong?” Julia turned a troubled face to Paulinus as a slave hurried past them, dragging her brothers’ kits behind him to the door. Flavius could be heard in the distance shouting to Bericus to see if the horses were saddled.
Paulinus, also in riding clothes, put an arm around Julia and sighed. “It looks like the spring campaign is going to start earlier than we thought. I’m afraid I saw it coming.”
“But why are you going with them? You aren’t in the army.”
Paulinus gave a snort of amusement. “It seems I might as well be. I got some orders of my own this morning:”
“Lucius, you’re dodging me.”
Paulinus sighed again and looked embarrassed. “I know I am. You can talk to your father about it after we’ve gone, and I expect he’ll explain what he can.”
“Papa?”
“Yes. I… er, had a talk with him this morning. I meant to talk to you first, but… things came up.”
“A talk about what?” Julia prodded him.
“A talk about us,” Paulinus said. He gave her a hesitant look. “I know I’m not what you had in mind, but… well, frankly, you didn’t strike me as a possibility either, at first. But now… well, it seemed like the right thing to do,” he finished lamely.
“Lucius!” Julia flung her arms around him and he staggered back. “And he agreed?”
“Well, I’m glad to see you do.” Paulinus smiled and looked relieved. He was a wealthy man with no necessity to marry for wealth, and in fact he had a good many reasons not to marry at all. He wanted a wife who wanted him. “Yes, he agreed. We don’t quite see eye to eye on some points, but we have a healthy respect for each other.” He didn’t add that he had ceased to hedge with Appius over exactly what it was that he did for the Emperor… and made a promise not to involve Julia in it. Paulinus had also stated flatly that if the Emperor wanted to hold the Rhenus he had better put all the men and money into Germany that he could, and the Senate had better like it. Paulinus had already said as much to the Emperor himself, of course, but Vespasian collected opinions the way he collected spies. The more voices that spoke as one on the subject, the better.
He wrapped his arms around Julia. These were things he would have to tell her, and she had enough brains to cope with them, he thought with satisfaction. But not while she was living under her father’s roof.
“Lucius.” Julia’s voice dragged him back to the present. “You haven’t even kissed me,” she said firmly, and so he did.
The household turned out to watch them ride away, a more tense farewell than they had made nearly two years ago. There was war in the air, and this time they had a harsher destination than a training camp at Rome. Aemelia and her parents were there as well, on Appius’s invitation, and Aemelia saw sadly that it was Flavius, not Correus, who turned to look back over his shoulder as he rode away.
Julia took her by the arm. “Come to my room with me,” she whispered. “I’ve got something to tell you.”
Aemelia looked unhappily down the tree-lined road at the diminishing figures of the riders moving along it, and Julia changed her mind. Her own news would keep. “I was wrong about Correus and you,” she said firmly. “Aemelia, Lucius says…”
* * *
Correus and the others drew rein at the foot of the great natural barrier that divided Italy from Gaul and Germany to the north, and they gave a gloomy eye to the roadway that snaked its way up into the Alpine passes.
“Damnation,” Flavius muttered from the muffling folds of his cloak. Real thaw had not yet fully come to these high peaks, and the view ahead offered an unpromising journey. A courier riding light on a hill-bred pony was one thing. Five heavily laden horses were another.
“We could have stayed out our leave and not lost any time,” Flavius grumbled. “What do you suppose has got old Rufinus in such a tearing hurry?”
“What do you suppose?” Correus said. “Somebody saw a German under his bed, I expect.”
“More likely the Rhenus has had an early thaw,” Paulinus said. “In which case they’re probably seeing Germans coming through the windows by now.”
Correus thought of the German spy he had interviewed for the legate at the start of winter. Something there, maybe. He put his heel to Antaeus’s flank, almost eagerly. Germans he could cope with; better than he had coped with the problems left two weeks behind him in his father’s house.
* * *
Paulinus had been right about the early thaw. Weather along the Rhenus had taken a freak turn and spread a warm hand unseasonably early over the hills of the Agri Decumates. And Calpurnius Rufinus now knew three things. Nyall w
ould fight; Nyall had dragged the rest of the Suevi into an alliance with him; and Rufinus’s spy had been thrown out of Nyallshold on his ear. Which left one important thing the legate didn’t know – just when Nyall would fight, and where. Calpurnius Rufinus recalled every man away on leave and ordered commanders of the other Rhenus garrisons to do likewise.
Weapons drill and route marches through the muddy slush stepped up with each day the weather held clear. Patrol galleys whisked along the river with supply ships and transports lumbering in their wake, and the Argentoratum fortress was thick with a changing parade of frontier scouts and couriers. The common legionary groused about the weather while his centurion stood by to see that every last speck of winter rust came off his pilum point.
The Argentoratum marketplace was full of bustle and rumor. Julius prowled among its stalls on a daily shopping excursion, but the best source of information was Rhodope, whose establishment he visited secretly. Freita, he felt certain, would place a whorehouse off limits if she thought of it, but Rhodope knew everything almost as soon as it happened. Julius took Rhodope small posies of wild flowers and was allowed to sit amid the oriental splendor and listen. He was at Rhodope’s when he heard that everyone on leave had been recalled.
“It’s war,” he told Freita. “And the centurion’s coming back!” He dumped an armload of firewood on the hearth and turned to see how the lady was going to take that.
Freita looked up from her loom, one hand arrested in midair as the shuttle fell to her lap. “Are you sure?”
“He’s been recalled. They all have.”
“But war?” War with her own kind.
Julius gave her a patient look. “They don’t send courier riders over the pass in this weather for nothing. What else would it be, an invitation to dinner?”
Freita lifted her hands to the loom and then let them fall back in her lap, all the while staring past the half-finished cloth toward the door as if she expected Correus to come walking through it on the heels of Julius’s news.
The Centurions Page 36