The Mask of Command

by Ian Ross

  At first it appeared that the procession of young men walking out onto the garden terrace were performers of some kind; there would be a play, perhaps, or a dance. Then Castus noticed their costume: heavy brass helmets and shoulder-guards of ornate and antique appearance, shields and weapons.

  ‘Friends,’ Rufus called, ‘in honour of our guest and his recent exploits against our enemies, I thought it only fitting to present for your entertainment a display of martial prowess!’

  The twelve gladiators stood in line before the portico, raising their weapons in salute. Castus studied their faces: none were professional fighters, but they had a look of grim determination. They were slaves, he guessed. Frankish prisoners like the ones he had seen working in the fields. Only one of the men, slim as a leather strap and with almost white-blond hair, looked like he knew how to fight. He had the eyes of a killer.

  ‘Do you like the equipment?’ Rufus asked, leaning close to breathe in his ear. ‘I bought it from the gladiatorial school in Lugdunum...’

  The rhythm of the music picked up as the first four men moved out to face each other. They would fight in pairs, Castus realised: a light-armed and heavy-armed man working together against matched opponents. He stood up, wanting to put some space between himself and Rufus, and feigned an interest in the show. He had seen gladiatorial bouts often enough, and he could appreciate the skill of the better fighters, but he seldom understood why civilians were so enthusiastic about them. It was supposed to promote manly virtue, so he had heard. Or to harden the spirits.

  In the evening light the two pairs circled, one man at a time darting forward to test his opponents. They looked serious enough, Castus thought; he wondered what incentive Rufus had given them to fight like this, or what punishment he had threatened if they did not.

  The clash of steel snapped him back to full attention. One of the fighters – a ‘fisherman’, armed with a net and trident – was trying to goad the man opposite into attacking. His opponent, the white-blond man, had cast aside his helmet. He closed with the netman, fast and dangerous, his crooked shortsword held low in a fighting grip. All along the balustrade the guests were watching, rapt. Some of the men were pointing and commenting to their neighbours, making rapid assessments of the fighters’ chances.

  Beyond the men was a group of women; Castus had not seen them before, and assumed they were the wives of the male guests. They must have been waiting in one of the other rooms of the villa when he was introduced to everyone. They seemed as attracted to the violence on the terrace below them as their husbands. But he noticed that one of the women had drawn back; she took a step, then another, then turned and walked silently into the house. Just for a moment, Castus glimpsed her face. His breath caught; there was a quick hard jolt in his chest, and the noise of the fighting seemed for a heartbeat to fade into silence. Then the woman was gone.

  Down on the terrace, the netman had taken a wound to the thigh. His partner was protecting him as he backed away, but the blond-haired fighter was pressing his attack, jabbing and feinting with his crooked blade. Over the sob and howl of the pipes, the rattle of tambourines, Castus heard the rasping panicked breaths of the injured man. The crowd of spectators were leaning out over the balustrade now, sensing a kill.

  Easing himself backwards, Castus edged away until he was out of sight of Rufus and the other guests, then strode into the house behind him. The hall was dark, deep in shadow, but lamps in the adjacent rooms threw oddly angled light through the connecting doors. The sound of the music and the fighting outside grew fainter as he moved through the rooms of the house. Slaves passed him, carrying lamps. A group of four lugged a heavy dining couch between them. All ignored him.

  He found her in the last room that opened off the portico. A library, it looked like, with cases of scrolls, tablets and bound codices displayed on shelves around the walls. The woman was standing with her back to the door as Castus entered, one hand raised to run a finger along the labels below the shelves. He shuffled his feet, then cleared his throat, and she turned in surprise. Instantly she appeared flustered, as if he had disturbed her in some private moment.

  ‘You don’t care for watching the gladiators, domina?’ Castus said.

  ‘No,’ she replied, glancing back nervously at the shelves. ‘No, I... it seems too cruel. They’re just slaves, not trained men. He promises them gold, you know, if they draw blood. Freedom for any that kill.’

  Castus nodded. He had guessed as much. The sounds from the front portico drifted on the evening air, the sob and the wail of the pipes, the clash of arms. A few of the spectators were shouting encouragement to their favourites now.

  ‘I knew you at once,’ Castus said, lowering his voice as he crossed the tiled floor. ‘I could barely believe it.’

  ‘They were all talking about you, and I recognised your name, but... it’s not an uncommon name. I didn’t know if it was really you. Then when I saw you, I thought you’d probably have forgotten me. Dux Limitis Germaniae... How grand you’ve become!’

  They were close together now, in the growing dimness beside the library shelves. Castus found he could not take his eyes from her. How long since he had last seen this woman – eleven years, or was it twelve? Back in the legion fortress of Eboracum in Britain, during the Pictish war. She had been only seventeen then, barely more than a child, but she had stayed in his memory ever since. The years had not changed her much: her face had grown more round, her hair was a lighter brown than he remembered, but she had the same curve to her lips, as if she were about to smile or speak, the same aquiline nose. The same cool intelligence in her eyes.

  ‘Marcellina,’ he said. He noticed her glance at the scar that disfigured his cheek. The years had marked him more deeply. ‘How did you come to be here? You were going to Londinium when I saw you last. To marry your cousin, wasn’t it?’

  ‘You have a good memory,’ she said with a quick smile, then dropped her gaze again. ‘I did go there, yes. But the engagement to my cousin didn’t last. There were complications. Then my brother fell sick, and his tutor ran off with most of our savings. He died, my brother.’

  ‘Sorry to hear that,’ Castus said. He remembered the boy, filled with grief and youthful disdain as he sat with his tutor in the townhouse in Eboracum.

  ‘But I was lucky, I suppose,’ Marcellina said. ‘I was introduced to a merchant from Gaul, and then married to him. Dulcitius brought me here six years ago. So, you see, I’m now a respectable Roman matron! We have two children as well, both girls. They’ll be eight and ten years old this autumn.’

  Castus nodded, digesting it all. Dulcitius, he remembered, was the grain importer he had met on the portico earlier. It pained him to think of Marcellina married to such an unimpressive man – but who was he to judge? And how their situations had changed: when they met last he had been a junior centurion, promoted from the ranks, illiterate and inexperienced. A man his comrades called Knucklehead. Marcellina had been the daughter of a Roman equestrian, an envoy and former frontier commander. Castus now held the rank that her father had once possessed.

  The realisation brought a spike of unease; Castus remembered how her father had died, choking on poison in a stone-lined pit beneath a Pictish fortress. He remembered Marcellina herself, a terrified fugitive in the ruins of her father’s villa. She had killed one of her attackers with a mattock; she had almost killed Castus himself.

  Looking at her now, he knew that she was remembering those same scenes. Those, and what followed: their flight to the walls of Eboracum, their strange and tender last meeting on the night of Saturnalia. The attraction between them had been obvious, and the years had not dulled it. Back then, he had been far beneath her in rank and station, but now?

  ‘It’s good to see you again,’ she said, and took his hand. The distance between them seemed to narrow, although neither had moved.

  A sudden shout came from outside, then a chorus of raised voices. Castus guessed that the pale-haired fighter had scored his kill. The
music still pulsed and whined. He felt the pressure of her hand, and could find nothing to say.

  CHAPTER XII

  The meal was laid out in the largest of the dining rooms, the doors at one end folded back to provide a view over the valley as the sunset dyed the distant woodlands. There were three semi-circular couches, each set for seven guests, with small round tables between them. In the space between the couches, slaves waited with dishes and flasks. Musicians played a quiet melody on flutes and a lyre. Castus was glad that the bagpiper had not joined them.

  He was placed at the end of the central couch, the position of honour, from which he could address the others if he desired, and at which he was served first from every new dish. Rufus reclined at the opposing end; the other five men around the couch were all local landowners or merchants. Castus noticed Marcellina as soon as he entered the room; she was on the left-hand couch, which was occupied solely by women. Dexter had been placed with another group of men reclining opposite.

  ‘You see, excellency,’ said Rufus’s thin-faced friend Fabianus as they picked through the appetisers, ‘although we live on the edge of a barbarian wilderness, we maintain the ancestral customs of Rome.’

  ‘Quite so!’ Rufus broke in. ‘In fact, I’d wager our ways are closer to those of our illustrious forebears than many who call themselves Roman these days! Here in the Gallic provinces, we preserve the blood of great Caesar himself.’

  ‘The first Caesar, that is,’ said Fabianus’s neighbour, with a smile. ‘Not our current boy emperor!’

  Castus frowned at the man, holding his gaze until he looked away, abashed. But now the first of the main dishes was carried in: smoked eel on a bed of mashed herbs and pickled cabbage. As the slaves screened him from the others around the table, Castus risked a glance across the room. Marcellina met his eye at once, then quickly dropped her gaze. It was maddening to be so close to her – only half a dozen paces separated the couches – and unable to speak, unable even to look at her without the danger of discovery. Castus knew that, for all their professed virtue, these provincials of Gaul were gossips as keen and malicious as any other civilians.

  ‘I’m proud to confess, friends,’ Rufus was saying, ‘that everything you will eat tonight, excepting only the eel, comes from my own estates. The carp were bred in my own pools; the boar hunted in my own forest reserves. And later you will get to taste my cherries!’

  Maddening too, Castus thought, to have to recline right next to Marcellina’s plump husband, who smelled of garlic and spoke with his mouth full. Stammering slightly, he was informing Castus of the threats to his trade on the Rhine.

  ‘Our freight-carrying ships from Britain, excellency, have an average capacity of ten thousand modii. Now, as you know, your troops garrisoned along the river require grain in the region of forty thousand five hundred modii per month to sustain them. A little they can produce themselves, obviously, but during the summer and autumn months – do you see? – we need to bring nearly fifty shiploads of grain across the sea from Britain and up the Rhine, carrying the produce of nearly three thousand iugera of arable land, to fill the military granaries...’

  As the man went on with his explanation, Castus inclined his head and glanced to his right. He saw Marcellina nodding as she listened to the woman beside her. A moment later she similarly inclined her head. Their gaze lingered for a heartbeat, then two.

  ‘And so, as I say, the barbarian threat to our river commerce, besides disrupting trade, also disrupts your own ability to counter it...’

  More dishes came and went: fish and flesh, smouldering in their sauces. The food was heavy and rich, and Castus tried not to fill his belly, nor drink too hard. He noticed that Dexter, at the far table, was being similarly abstemious. Some of the other guests were quite clearly not.

  ‘Have you actually met this boy Crispus, excellency?’ asked a man at the centre of the couch, his face shining with meat juice. ‘Is it true he’s only fifteen?’

  ‘I’ve met the most noble Caesar, yes,’ Castus told him, with an emphasis that made the man gulp thickly and glance down at his dinner.

  The slaves were bringing glasses of amber wine now, lightly sweetened with honey. A huge dish of plump dark cherries stood on the table.

  ‘All of them Christians!’ the drunken guest was saying. ‘The Caesar, and the prefect too! Most of his court I’ll bet... How is the empire to survive with that impiety at its heart?’

  ‘Friends!’ Rufus cried loudly, raising himself from the couch. The musicians fell silent at a gesture. ‘Friends, join me now in a toast to our most honoured guest, his excellency Aurelius Castus! Three times long life!’

  He lifted his glass as all around the hall the other guests lifted theirs, crying out the acclamation, ‘Vivat! Vivat! Vivat!’ and the sound rolled out across the portico and into the night.

  *

  ‘Walk with me a while, excellency,’ Rufus said, once the last of those guests who would not be staying at the villa had departed. ‘The evening air’s quite the tonic after a heavy meal, I find – and I can show you that tower you were so interested in!’

  From the portico Castus could see the line of torches moving away up the track along the valley. Those who left had estates close by, or houses in Juliacum. Marcellina had gone, with her husband; Dulcitius had bid him a fulsome farewell, but she had not spoken. Castus knew they had a villa just to the west of Juliacum, and a house in Colonia. Doubtless, Dulcitius had said, they would meet again soon. For a moment, as she turned to go, Marcellina had glanced back at Castus. Had he imagined the promise in her eyes? Surely he had – she was a married woman now. She had her own family, her own life, and he was not a part of it.

  Shrugging off the lingering sensation of regret, he followed Rufus along the portico. Slaves brought them cloaks, for there was a damp autumnal chill to the evening. They descended the steps to the garden terrace, where the gladiators had fought earlier, then climbed the path to the southern end of the villa. Another figure joined them in the half-darkness: Rufus’s thin-faced neighbour Fabianus.

  ‘A substantial structure, as you can see,’ Rufus said, gesturing at the blockhouse built onto the end of the villa. Castus gazed up at it, appraising. The tower was several storeys high, with a low tiled roof and slit windows on the upper floors. A ladder gave access to the raised door, and there was a wooden walkway built around the topmost storey.

  ‘Perhaps tomorrow you could see inside, if you’d like?’

  Castus shook his head. He knew that looking at the tower was just a pretext for this evening stroll; Rufus wanted to talk, and Castus was content to let him.

  ‘Let’s walk a little further then,’ Rufus suggested. ‘There’s an exedra down by the lower fishpond. A fine place to sit.’

  They descended the path from the tower. As they walked, Castus became aware of the shapes of men moving in the gardens around them. Rufus’s armed retainers, he realised. For the first time he felt the prickle of anxiety, a suggestion of threat rising in his mind. Dexter had remained back at the house, and Castus carried no weapon with him. He wondered whether Rufus and Fabianus might be armed. Their cloaks could conceal a knife or even a sword with ease. He guarded his feelings, giving away no signs of apprehension.

  ‘Anyone who knows about our recent history here,’ Rufus was saying as they walked, ‘must surely understand our desire for security. The Rhine is only two days’ march from this place – on the other side are the savages who have devastated our province repeatedly within living memory. So you cannot blame us for looking to our own defences...’

  ‘I was sent here to protect this province,’ Castus said. ‘It’s my job to do so.’

  ‘Of course! And you’ve already proved that you can take action... But can you act in your own best interests?’

  Castus frowned, letting the silence stretch. They had arrived at the fishpond, and Rufus led them into the wooden structure that stood upon its bank, a round rustic pagoda, like a temple to some local sylvan d
eity. There were benches inside – Castus imagined Rufus coming here to gaze proudly upon his plump carp. The waters of the pool spread away into the darkness, lightly hazed with mist.

  ‘How did my predecessor, Valerius Leontius, die?’ he said. Rufus and Fabianus had taken a bench, but Castus remained standing.

  ‘As we told you,’ Rufus replied. ‘He was killed by the barbarians. Some argument – a sordid business. I don’t rightly know! But he was... inflexible. He failed, I think, to correctly grasp the situation here.’

  ‘And what is the situation here, would you say?’

  Fabianus got up and strolled to the wooden pillars, gazing out at the pool. The mood had shifted noticeably. This whole evening, Castus knew – the bath, the entertainments and the meal – had been intended to make him malleable. Now they were trying to intimidate him. He kept his composure, trying not to shudder as the cold air leaked through his cloak.

  ‘I’m told,’ Rufus said in a musing tone, ‘that you met with the leader of these barbarians who wish to settle in our province. That you gave him... verbal assurances that his demands would be passed directly to the office of the Caesar at Treveris.’

  ‘Requests, not demands. Yes, I did. Such things are the business of imperial government. The Caesar himself and his prefect will decide what’s to be done.’

  ‘Ah, the Caesar, yes. A boy, sent to rule over men! It might almost be taken as an insult... And the prefect is Bassus – another Christian. But I can tell you, my friend, we here on the frontier will not lightly surrender our lands to our ancestral enemies!’

  ‘As I understand it, the lands in question are deserted. Nobody farms them or occupies them.’