SPQR VI: Nobody Loves a Centurion

by John Maddox Roberts

  “Any ideas, Decius?” Carbo asked.

  “Absolutely none. I won’t admit it to Labienus, but I’m as devoid of answers as a Bruttian is of table manners. You might as well ask an Egyptian to exhibit bravery in battle.”

  “No, you’d better not tell Labienus that,” he concurred. “Just smile your superior smile and pretend you know more than you’re letting on.” Carbo knew me all too well.

  “I’ll figure it out sooner or later,” I assured him. “It’s just that we’re dealing with barbarians here.”

  “That’s why I brought you to see this.”

  “So what do we do now?” I asked. “It doesn’t seem quite right to just leave them hanging there.” It wasn’t that I really thought their spirits would harm us if they weren’t properly buried, but I was in no mood to take any chances.

  “No, we get away from this place. It will be light soon. If the Helvetii didn’t do this, they’ll be along to investigate soon. This hill has looked like the first evening of Saturnalia all night. The Druids were Gauls, let the Gauls take care of them.”

  This was eminently sensible advice and we followed it forthwith. Our little party did not exactly run back down the hill but we did move out smartly. We found our horses where we had left them and remounted. We rode back at an easy pace, because Carbo refused to leave his skirmishers behind. This was an estimable display of loyalty, but not one close to my own heart.

  “Was there anybody else there when you found the place?” I asked him as we rode. I kept looking over my shoulder for an advancing army.

  “Not a soul. Whoever did it was not long gone, though. The fire was still burning high, so I didn’t need any torches to see them hanging there.”

  “I wish I could go back to investigate after daylight,” I said. “But I’m only going to do it if Labienus agrees to give me the whole legion for security first. With the hill surrounded I might be able to keep my mind on my work.”

  “Don’t count on that,” Carbo said. “What do you think you might find?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know, but somebody always drops something. I might find an indication of who did it or why it happened.”

  “Do barbarians always need reasons for doing things?” he asked.

  “Always,” I assured him. “It may not be something that we would understand but there has to be a reason.” The Gauls and the Druids and Titus Vinius. Somehow they were tied together by the gold in that chest and in some way it had led to these bizarre killings.

  We rode back into the camp as gray light was staining the eastern horizon. As always, the legion was wide awake by this hour. The clatter and bustle was reassuring after the strange events of the night.

  “Any activity from the barbarians last night?” I called up to a sentry on the gate.

  “Not a sound from them,” he answered. “Doesn’t seem right, somehow.” Any break in routine seems ominous to soldiers, even a reduction in danger and harassment.

  “I know it’s useless to tell your men to keep their mouths shut about this,” Carbo said as we dismounted. “Mine certainly won’t.

  “We are all loyal to Rome!” Lovernius insisted.

  “Of course. But things are chancy enough now without all our Gallic auxilia getting agitated. They’re not all educated men like you, and the Twins know our own soldiers are as superstitious as a bunch of old peasant women.” The trumpets sounded officer’s call. “Let’s go report to the legatus.” He turned and walked toward the praetorium. I gave my reins to Indiumix and started to follow, when Lovernius touched my arm. I stopped and faced him.

  “Decius Caecilius, when you return from the praetorium, ride with us on our morning patrol.”

  I was about to ask him what this was about, but I could see from his expression that he was turning over some painful thoughts. Clearly, he wanted to speak with me. It was quite as clear that he did not want to do it just here or just now. More than anything else, I wanted to get some answers from someone, anyone, who might hold another piece of the puzzle. I turned back to Indiumix.

  “See that my horse is ready to ride out.” He nodded solemnly.

  When we arrived at the meeting, Labienus had Carbo give a quick summary of the night’s events. The expressions of the other officers were incredulous. It was all just too far outside their experience.

  “Any conclusions, Decius Caecilius?” Labienus asked.

  I ruthlessly suppressed the urge to make a facetious request for a six thousand-man escort to go back and examine the site. “Just that I feel certain that this event and the murder of Titus Vinius are somehow connected.”

  “You are grasping at anything to save your client,” Paterculus said. “Commander, in my twenty-five years of soldiering I have never seen so many strange things happen at once, but what has any of it to do with fighting a war? They can hang a Druid from every tree between here and the Northern Sea for all I care. It’s all just native doings and none of our concern. Let’s stick to matters that make sense and have a bearing on our situation.” A murmur among the assembled officers indicated a good deal of agreement.

  “I’d say the same thing if we weren’t stuck out here all alone and dependent on our Gallic allies,” the legatus told him. “They may proclaim allegiance to Rome and execrate the Helvetii, but they’re as religion-besotted as so many Egyptians. They’ve been jumpy for days and something like this could trigger mass desertions. I hate to contemplate exemplary executions, but I won’t hesitate to order them. See that everyone knows this. Now, officer of the night watch, your report.”

  After the meeting broke up, Labienus kept me for a private talk. “So you learned nothing, eh?” he said.

  “I gathered a good deal of information from which to draw conclusions,” I said evasively. “And I expect to have some answers from a trusted informant by midday.” I thought this sounded impressive.

  “You’d better. I am very tired of these matters and I want to see an end to them almost as much as I want to see Caesar arrive with those legions.”

  From the praetorium I went to my tent to grab some break-fast before setting out on the morning patrol. Hermes was gone to his arms drill. Molon and Freda were likewise absent. Just when you want them, slaves always manage to duck out. Grumbling, I located the provisions and found some bread and cheese. This I choked down with plain water.

  I was in a bad mood as I clumped toward the cavalry quarters. It seemed to me that the sleeplessness and poor diet of army life was probably calculated. The Gauls had better watch out when this lot was turned loose on them. Just a few days of it had put me in a murderous temper and these men lived this way for years at a time.

  I found my little squadron of the ala mounted and ready for their patrol. The praetorian area was subdued and apprehensive, with men who were usually cheerful and boisterous speaking in low tones and frowning. Word of the Druid killings had spread. I could only imagine what the atmosphere must be like in the auxilia camp.

  We rode out through the Porta Principalis Sinistra in the eastern wall of the camp. We rode until we were out of sight of both camp and rampart, then Lovernius called a halt near a small clump of trees.

  “There will be no Helvetii to chase this morning,” he said, dismounting. “Let’s make ourselves comfortable.”

  “That sounds good to me,” I said, feeling the accumulated soreness of the night’s activities as I heaved myself from the saddle. One of the men took our horses to picket them among the trees. We all sat in the shade. Lovernius had thoughtfully brought along a fat skin of native wine and we began passing it around our circle.

  When it came to me, I leaned back against the bole of a tree and directed the pale stream into my mouth. For native stuff it was excellent, or else my tastes were coarsening. I didn’t try to rush things. The turf was springy and comfortable beneath me. Lovernius would tell me what he had to say when he was ready and I had run out of people to badger in the camp.

  “I do not want you to think,” Lovernius said at
last, “that we who are loyal to Rome are in any way in sympathy with these Helvetii.”

  “I would never think it,” I assured him, not insincerely. In truth, while we Romans tended to lump all Gauls together, they had only the sketchiest sense of national kinship. In no way did they feel that they were taking sides with foreigners against their brothers. A member of another Gallic tribe was as foreign to them as a Syrian is to a Roman.

  “We do not allow the Druids to dominate us,” he asserted. “Not as they do the Helvetii and others. But we still regard them with respect.”

  “Quite understandable.” I took another pull at the wine. Not bad at all, really. I passed it to Lovernius, feeling that he needed a little more lubrication. He had almost worked himself up to saying what he had to say. He took a couple of sizable swallows and passed it on. Then he sat in silence for a while. Then, with an effort, he spoke.

  “Titus Vinius was triple-slain.”

  I knew, at last, I was onto something. “What does that mean?”

  “You recall that you told me Vinius had been strangled, stabbed, and axed on the head?”

  “More like clubbed on the head, but I recall telling you.” I also remembered the distressed reaction of his men. At the time he had said that they were upset at the defiling of a sacred pond.

  “Well, that is a Druid thing. For some sacrifices, the victim is triple-slain; he or she may be hanged or throttled. In either case the noose is left around the neck. Then the victim may be stabbed or the throat cut, then smashed on the head, then thrown into a pond or sunk in a marsh. Sometimes only hanged and stabbed or axed, the drowning being the third death.”

  I remembered now the triple-headed god on Badraig’s staff and the Gallic habit of doing things by threes. “You think the Druids killed Vinius as a sacrifice?”

  “They must have! Who else could have done it, and why?”

  “The why of it is a major question,” I said, my mind speeding for a change. “But I know that Vinius had some sort of dealings on the side. He was amassing wealth from somewhere, and it certainly wasn’t from the army. Might he have been dealing with the Druids? If he somehow betrayed them—and this would certainly be in character—they might have done away with him in revenge.”

  “But to do this without a festival of the people?” he objected. “That is terribly irregular.”

  “In time of war,” I said, “we often simplify our religious rituals. Perhaps that is what they did. Am I correct in believing that the Druids never use arms?”

  “Except for the instruments of sacrifice, they never even touch them. It would be polluting.”

  “There,” I said, spreading my hands, “what could be more sensible? They can’t use swords or spears, so they used what they had.” It didn’t answer everything, but I liked the sound of it.

  “Well, perhaps,” he said, still very uneasy.

  “But there is more, isn’t there?” I prodded.

  “Yes. What we saw last night.”

  “That had the look of a sacrifice as well,” I said. “But you said that is never the way a Druid is sacrificed.”

  “It is not,” he said, taking another pull at the skin.

  “Then tell me, Lovernius: Who sacrifices their victims by hanging alone?”

  “The Germans!” he said, vehemently. “In their sacred groves, they hang their victims in oak trees. At one great festival held every twelve years, they sacrifice twelve of every living thing: men, beasts, even birds and fish. Hundreds of corpses hanging in a huge oak grove near the Northern Sea.”

  “The smell must be appalling,” I said. “You have seen these things with your own eyes?”

  “No, of course not. The only Gauls who see their rites are the ones who get sacrificed. But I have heard of this. Everyone has.”

  “I see.” More reliance on rumor. But this probably had a greater core of truth than the hearsay of soldiers in a strange country. “Have you any idea what these strange events might portend?”

  He shook his head dejectedly. “None, save that things like this should not happen. Is this a war of men or of gods?”

  “The two do seem to be getting confused,” I told him. “But I feel that all this mystical confusion is nothing but concealment for depressingly human evils.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked earnestly.

  How to explain the way my mind worked to a group of Gauls, half-civilized though they were. It was hard enough to explain myself to my fellow Romans, steeped as they were in traditions of Greek logic and native commonsense. I had a try at it. The Gauls paid my words close attention, with serious expressions on their faces. They wanted answers as badly as I did.

  “Lovernius, men explain their actions with a great many words, imputing all sorts of noble motives to themselves. They may say they are driven by patriotism, or by devotion to the gods, or by the interests of the people, or loyalty to a king, or any number of other great things. Usually, they are lying. Far more often, their motives are base. They are after power, or wealth, or some other man’s woman.”

  “This I understand,” Lovernius said, “but these are religious matters.”

  I held up a pedantic finger, the wine lending eloquence to my teeming mind. “Always, Lovernius, when men perform ignoble deeds and seek to justify themselves with high-flown words and portentous actions, I look for the shoddy, base element that ties everything together. A few days ago I discovered that Titus Vinius had amassed a great deal of gold from no obvious source. Forget about gods and priests and dreadful sacrifices. The gold is the thing. When I find out where it came from and where it was destined, I feel sure that I will have all parties involved in this matter tied together as with a chain. A chain of gold.” I was absurdly pleased with the conceit, then reminded myself to go easy on the wine so early in the day.

  The Gauls, with their love of flowery rhetoric, did not consider my speech excessive, and Lovernius seemed relieved to have the matter out in the open. He was loyal to Rome, but superstitious dread had caused him to hold his silence about the triple slaying. The triple hanging, on the other hand, had been too much. He now felt that I would be able to set these matters to rest with dispatch. I hoped that his faith in me was not entirely without justification.

  11

  WE RODE BACK INTO THE CAMP AT midday, when the trumpets were sounding cheerily and the men were assembling by messes for their noon meal. It says much for our soldiers that they can anticipate even such Spartan fare with pleasure. I left my horse with the ala and went to my tent, where I found Hermes laying out my lunch. He had managed to scrounge a pot of fruit preserved in honey and a roast duck. I was not about to ask him how he had accomplished this minor miracle.

  “Keep this up and I might just manumit you when you’re too old to be useful,” I told him as I sat down and launched into the food. He poured me a cup of watered wine, which I hardly needed. “Where are Molon and Freda?”

  “I haven’t seen them all day,” he said. “I thought maybe you’d sent them off on some errand.”

  The news stole some of the pleasure from my lunch. Slaves are not supposed to roam around at will, even such eccentric specimens as those two. More and more, they were behaving like free persons and would have to be disabused of that notion.

  “When did you last see them?”

  “Molon was drunk behind the tent last night and I didn’t look in on him. I didn’t see either of them when your Gauls came for you last night, and when I got up this morning I didn’t see them, either, not that I was looking for them. They have to be around here somewhere. They wouldn’t dare set foot outside the camp.”

  “That would be foolish,” I agreed, but I was not happy about this. One more concern when I already had far too many.

  With lunch finished, I was temporarily at loose ends. I rose to go look for my errant slaves with Hermes dogging my steps. I badly wanted some sleep, but I knew that it would not come if I lay down in my tent. I had too much to think about. As we traversed the camp, I
told Hermes the latest developments. He was far from a brilliant conversationalist, but I had long ago learned that talking to someone helped to sort out confusing matters.

  “If Germans hanged the Druids, then there are Germans nearby, right?” Hermes said.

  “Your grasp of logic is phenomenal,” I commended.

  “No, I mean there are a lot of them, right? More than just those two you saw a few nights ago?”

  “Not necessarily.” In fact, I had been brooding over that very question. The boy wasn’t really foolish. “Those were two huge, powerful warriors, and two of the Druids were elderly, and no Druid is trained to arms. Two such brutes as Eintzius and Eramanzius could easily have overpowered these sacerdotal Gauls.”

  “Still,” he said dubiously, “getting them all the way up that mountain, and building a bonfire and hauling them up into the trees: that sounds like a big job for two men.”

  “Well, they proclaimed themselves to be of royal lineage. Doubtless they came here with companions. But a few dozen Germans are nothing to worry about.”

  “Just as long as it’s not an army of them.” Hermes was getting to be like everybody else; jumping at every shadow, worried about our tiny numbers and exposed condition. Like everybody else, he had ample justification for his fears.

  A thorough search of the forum and other more or less public areas failed to turn up Molon or Freda. The centuries were no more helpful. Even an encampment of six thousand men is a small community and Freda was the most noticeable creature for a hundred miles in all directions. An elephant could not have drawn more attention.

  “Maybe they went to the camp of the auxilia,” Hermes said. “Slaves and foreigners go in and out through the gates pretty freely during daylight.”

  “I don’t know what they’d be doing there but it’s worth a look,” I grumbled. So it was back out through the Sinistra gate I had ridden through that morning. Nobody on the gate remembered seeing them, but that watch had only been on duty for a short time.