The Price of Freedom

by Rosemary Rowe

  Contents

  Cover

  A Selection of Previous Titles in this series by Rosemary Rowe

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Foreword

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Epilogue

  A Selection of Previous Titles in this series by Rosemary Rowe

  ENEMIES OF THE EMPIRE

  A ROMAN RANSOM

  A COIN FOR THE FERRYMAN

  DEATH AT POMPEIA’S WEDDING *

  REQUIEM FOR A SLAVE *

  THE VESTAL VANISHES *

  A WHISPERING OF SPIES *

  DARK OMENS *

  THE FATEFUL DAY *

  THE IDES OF JUNE *

  THE PRICE OF FREEDOM *

  * available from Severn House

  THE PRICE OF FREEDOM

  Rosemary Rowe

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain and the USA 2017 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

  This eBook edition first published in 2017 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2018 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD

  Copyright © 2017 by Rosemary Aitken.

  The right of Rosemary Aitken to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8742-9 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-869-9 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-932-9 (e-book)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  To John and Linda – lb and sil – with much love

  FOREWORD

  The novel is set in the dying weeks of AD193, when Britannia was the most remote and northerly of all the provinces of a Rome still rocked by the events of a tumultuous year. No less than three Emperors had been overthrown within the last twelve moons: first the corrupt and cruel Commodus, then the austere and careful Pertinax (presumed friend and patron of the fictional Marcus in this tale), and finally his successor, Didius, who effectively bribed his way into Imperial power with promises of money which he could not pay. Even now the situation was extremely tense, the most recently acclaimed new Emperor, Septimius Severus, was still fending off two remaining pretenders to the purple: one, Pescennius Niger, the governor of Syria, was currently engaged in armed rebellion, while the other was the governor of Britannia itself. For the moment – as the story suggests – his loyalty, and that of the legions under his command, had been bought by the courtesy title of ‘Caesar’ and a promise that he would succeed as Severus’s heir. (A hollow promise, as later events were to prove.)

  Meanwhile, Severus was undertaking what we might now describe as a ‘charm offensive’: proclaiming that he was the ‘avenger’ of the murdered Pertinax, the last ‘true’ Emperor, whose reputation he was eager to restore and whose supporters (like Marcus) he set out to woo, by sending personal legates with messages and gifts to the most influential of them ‘throughout the Empire’. There are claims that this continued ‘despite flood and storm’ until the defeat of Pescennius in late 194, and this is the assumption on which this story turns.

  It may be exaggeration: travel in winter was extremely arduous, and sea travel in particular was rare and hazardous (as witness the unseasonal voyage and shipwreck of St Paul), indeed most captains would refuse to put to sea in any threat of storm. However, legates and other official travellers (including the Imperial post) did have the authority to compel a ship to sea, so that the arrival of a legate in the winter months – although unlikely – is not impossible.

  Nor was road travel easy. All major routes were military ones, built by soldiers for the army’s use, and – though still difficult in bad weather – paved roads made long distance travel possible, but in winter older tracks were often near-impassable. In low-lying areas, flooding was an annual event and whole areas – now drained – were turned to swampy bog. Ancient Celtic settlements had made this fact a source of self-defence – only a local could find the way across the marsh or safely estimate the tides (still true in some coastal areas today) – and in isolated places this tradition probably remained, as the siting of Darturius’s property suggests.

  On major roads, official travellers (of any rank) might use the ‘mansio’ a kind of military inn, where facilities were generally good and horses might be changed. Civilian inns were much less welcoming: one was likely to share a bed with fellow travellers, let alone a room, and bedding (difficult to clean) might not be changed for months. The food was basic, there were bugs, and sanitary arrangements were rudimentary, at best. But fleas, filth and overcrowding were the least of the hazards one might face. Many establishments were notorious – like the one encountered by Libertus in this tale – little better than a bawdy house, where crime and robbery were commonplace.

  The centres of population which were linked by these main roads, varied in size and status and sometimes purpose, too. Glevum (modern Gloucester) was an important place, thriving with shipping, trade and industry and a centre for regional civic government. This meant that it was almost certainly responsible for the collation and return of tax for the surrounding area, with contributory tax-collection being conducted in a number of small towns, including the semi-fictional Uudum in this tale. (Semi-fictional, because it is assumed to be approximately where Woodchester is now. The ‘chester’ suggests a Roman army base nearby, and medieval sources give the name as ‘Uudchester’, but there is no evidence that such a name, or civic settlement, existed at this time.)

  Tax collectors were notoriously unpopular, of course, although the system had been much reformed. The early ‘licences’ – effectively contracts which required tax collectors to submit a given sum to Rome, but permitted them to set the tax at any rate they chose – had been
replaced by a regulated system, in which the publicanus received a fixed percentage, and tax collecting had become almost respectable. However, failure to produce the requisite amount would result in an inevitable fine, seizure of all property and – if necessary, the sale of the publicanus into slavery. This system was likely to be rigorously enforced – since, in the case of shortfall in the tax, the members of the local curia (in this case, Glevum council) were legally required to make up any deficit themselves.

  The sale of licences was not confined to tax. Official permits were required for the extraction of precious minerals, and other natural commodities. For the most part the state reserved such profitable activities for itself, but small-scale private operations might be licensed, on payment of a fee, at the discretion of the magistrates. One such commodity was salt – (called ‘sal’ in Latin: it was so valuable, it was even used as payment to the legions at one time, from which the word ‘salary’ derives). There were large and profitable salt-extraction enterprises in East Britannia, owned and operated by the state (using slaves, of course), but there is also evidence of small-scale evaporation pans and kilns elsewhere in the province, which appear to have been in (largely unsuccessful) private hands. This is the presumed status of the imaginary saltern which features in this story.

  Latin was the language of the educated, people – especially in the newly founded towns – were adopting Roman dress and habits, and citizenship, with the precious social and legal rights which it conferred, was the aspiration of almost everyone. However, most inhabitants of Britannia were not citizens at all. Many were freemen, scratching a precarious living from a trade. Hundreds more were slaves – mere chattels of their masters, to be bought and sold with no more rights or status than any other domestic animal. Some slaves led pitiable lives; a slave in a kindly household, ensured of food and clothes, might have a more enviable lot than many a poor freeman starving in a squalid hut. All the same, slaves – especially senior ones who were often given small gratuities by guests – might spend a life-time saving their ‘slave-price’ to buy themselves free, though some masters either confiscated tips (slaves officially owned nothing) or else continually increased the sum required until the servant was too old to work.

  Yet Celtic life and customs continued to exist, most especially in country areas, and many poorer families, living in native settlements well off the major roads, might have little contact with Roman ways at all, except for essential trade and business purposes. Slavery was less universal in the Celtic world, being traditionally reserved for conquered enemies or – as in this story – as a temporary arrangement in payment of a debt. However, by the second century, Roman practices were spreading everywhere.

  Real freedom, naturally, was reserved for men. Respectable Roman women married very young (twelve was not uncommon and fourteen was usual) and thereafter were expected to produce a family, and spin and weave – though not cook, since the household almost certainly had slaves to do that task. (Slave-girls, of course, were the possessions of their masters to be used as he desired – any resultant children might be sold, or simply killed.) Although individual Roman women might inherit large estates, and many wielded considerable influence within the house, they were excluded from public office and a woman (of any age) was deemed a child in law, requiring a man to speak for her and manage her affairs – a father, husband, or a legal ‘guardian’. Poorer ‘free’ women worked beside their men, or – like the inn-girls in this narrative – otherwise found ways to keep themselves alive.

  Celtic females, like Aigneis in this narrative, had one advantage over their Roman counterparts: by tradition they had the right to choose themselves a mate, or at least to refuse to marry a man they did not like – although, as the story suggests, economic necessity might dictate otherwise.

  The rest of the Romano-British background to this book has been derived from a number of (sometimes contradictory) pictorial and written sources as well as artefacts. However, although I have done my best to create an accurate picture of the times, this remains a work of fiction and there is no claim to total academic authenticity. Septimius Severus and events in Rome are historically attested, as is the existence of Glevum and the basic geography of Britannia. The rest is the product of my imagination.

  Relata refero. Ne Iupiter quidem omnibus placet. I only tell you what I heard. Jove himself can’t please everyone.

  ONE

  It was a distinction I could have done without. In fact, I have carefully resisted nomination to the town council over several years, on a number of occasions and on a variety of excuses.

  But when my patron, Marcus Aurelius Septimus – the senior local magistrate and one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in all Britannia – decides on something that he wishes you to do, in the end it is folly to resist. Especially when he seems to feel that he is offering a favour, and makes it clear that he’ll be affronted if you don’t accept.

  I finally succumbed the evening he invited me to dine – though even then it was more or less an accident. Perhaps I was too dazzled by the occasion to be fully on my guard, though I should have suspected his motives from the start. Being asked to feast with Marcus at his country house is a signal compliment for any citizen, and for a mere Celtic tradesman like myself it was absurdly flattering – it had happened only rarely in all the years since I’d become his cliens, and then it was either because he needed me (usually as a witness or something similar) or because there was a huge public banquet, where I had the lowest seat.

  This time, however (according to the courier page who brought the message to my roundhouse door) it was a private feast, arranged on sudden impulse in honour of a distinguished visitor who had arranged to call. It would be held the very evening this personage arrived – which was to be the next day following – and I was one of a small and specially selected group. Furthermore, I was confidentially assured, I was to be seated on the left hand of my host, ‘in recognition of recent services’ – the second highest couch position in the room. It was an unlooked for honour and – naturally – had the desired effect.

  I was ridiculously pleased (I must be credulous!). I sent my acceptance back by the same messenger, and duly presented myself on the appointed night, dressed in my best toga, and scrubbed and barbered by my slave-boys to within an inch of death – this on the orders of my dear wife, Gwellia, who was in a state of high excitement even greater than my own.

  She even wrapped my warmest cloak around me, as I left, with her own two hands, sending my attendant servant – whose job that should have been – to fetch and fuel the little oil-lamp we would use to light us home. ‘Now, husband, don’t be later than courtesy demands! It is threatening to be frosty later on, and you know how Marcus’s feasts can linger on!’

  I nodded. Gwellia was always fussing over me, but I had come to the same conclusion for myself, however unconvivial an early exit might appear. It was almost Saturnalia and the nights were dark and cold, so – though Marcus’s country residence was not half-a-mile away – at this time of year returning to my roundhouse would be a daunting walk, on a chilly forest lane when there might be wolves about. Any of Marcus’s visitors would understand at once, though my host was apt to be lofty about such trifling concerns.

  Even he, though, had shown unusual thoughtfulness today. He was not offering me accommodation overnight, of course – as he always did with visitors of higher rank, or with further to travel in the dark – but he had arranged for one of these more privileged diners to send his private litter back (after it had delivered its owner at the feast) to transport me to the villa while there was still sufficient light. Not home again, obviously – by that time it would be too dark for the bearer-slaves to see – but the arrangement would save me half the walk and I accepted gratefully.

  It meant, moreover, that I could wear my toga there, instead of having to put it on when I arrived. That would have been impractical if I’d been on foot. The unwieldy garment is not designed for lengthy walks in
wind and rain, least of all on aging citizens like me. Mine always threatens to unwind itself at the least exertion – to say nothing of what the muddy winter track would have done to my newly-laundered hems.

  So I arrived at the villa gates in style, in a handsome curtained litter borne at a brisk trot by four handsome boys in scarlet uniforms – with my poor slave, Minimus, swaddled in a cloak and padding after them – exactly as if I were a wealthy man myself. The gatekeeper (a burly giant whom I vaguely knew) flung the gates open at once and waved us grandly through. I decided that he hadn’t realised it was me!

  Dismounting at the front door of the house, I was met with similar elaborate and unaccustomed courtesy. Practised hands relieved me of my cloak, a dining-wreath of flowers was pressed onto my brow, my little slave was taken off to the servants’ quarters for entertainment and his own repast while I was shown at once into the atrium. A tow-headed young man in a similar wreath and pale green synthesis – that useful combination of tunic and toga which the Romans often favour for dining-purposes – was there before me, seated on a stool and nibbling delicately at a plate of sugared plums.

  He looked up as I approached and waved a sweetmeat at me. ‘Citizen Libertus! Greetings! How good to see you here!’ He patted a vacant stool beside him. ‘You found my litter and bearers satisfactory, I trust?’

  I beamed. So this was the man I had to thank!

  ‘Quite excellent, Titus Flavius,’ I replied, with genuine pleasure as I took the proffered seat. ‘Thank you for making them available.’ I had other reasons to be grateful to Titus Flavius: a year or two ago, when I’d found myself facing an impromptu court of curial magistrates – accused of a wholly imaginary crime – he was the only councillor who listened to my pleas and spoke in my defence. I knew that he had prospered, but I had not seen him since, though in his careless but flamboyant way (how can a man look slightly dishevelled in a brand-new synthesis?) he seemed in splendid health. I murmured something civil to that general effect.