‘My lord,’ she said to her husband.
‘My lady,’ he replied, inclining his head. ‘It is good to see you safe.’ He pecked her on the cheek with no great suggestion of warmth.
Yet there was even less hint of real affection in her brisk and formal ‘Good morning, my dear Ferox. I trust you are well.’
‘My lady,’ he replied. ‘You are most kind.’ He looked for some sign to show whether she now hated or trusted him, but there was none, only the noble Roman lady and dutiful wife walking beside her husband.
Cerialis hesitated in the doorway, breathed deeply, and then went in. Before Ferox could follow, Lepidina stepped after him.
‘My lady,’ he said, ‘it is probably better if you remain outside.’
She turned, every inch the high and mighty aristocrat. ‘Centurion, I am grateful for your concern for my welfare, but this is my house and I am not one of your soldiers to order as you please.’
Privatus was standing behind her and Ferox saw the chamberlain give an approving nod. The freedman could not see his mistress wink. He hoped that it was a sign of forgiveness and the simple gesture brought memories of the night flooding over him again. Ferox could tell that all his natural suspicion and scepticism would not be enough whenever he was near this woman, for there was something overpowering about her. As he followed her through the door he looked down at her shoulders, the smooth white skin barely covered by her light dress, and he longed to pluck off the brooches holding it up and see it rustle to the floor. As if she could read his mind, the lady turned her head and gave him a cold stare.
The smell brought him fully back to grim reality. There was the usual odour of a bedchamber in the morning, before the slaves had come to empty the vase of night soil. It was the scent of the human body, tinged with sweat, and if this was fainter with a woman it was always there. The damp, musty smell so common at Vindolanda and especially on the ground floor of the praetorium lingered in the background, even when Privatus got a pole and opened the shutters on the high windows, so that bars of sunlight speared into the room.
Over it all was the smell of death: not the violent butcher’s yard stink of the dismembered dogs, but a subtle, insidious cloud that seeped into the nostrils and throat. The girl lay on the bed, and now that the windows gave them more light Ferox could see that what he had taken to be a necklace was a deep cut around her throat. Someone had covered her up in blankets, so that it would look as if the guest was asleep in her bed.
‘It is her maid,’ Privatus told them. ‘Her name was Artemis and she was a silly little thing, but worked hard and was faithful.’
Cerialis sighed. ‘I’ll organise a search. Ferox, would you mind taking a look and seeing if you can work out what happened?’
‘Of course, sir.’ One thing Ferox knew had happened was that he had failed. He had saved the golden woman in this room, but the price had been the death of this unfortunate slave girl and maybe her mistress as well.
‘I shall stay and assist.’ Cerialis looked surprised when his wife spoke. ‘In case the centurion needs to ask about the household,’ she explained.
The prefect stared at her for a while and Ferox could not read his thoughts. Then Cerialis gave a gentle nod. ‘That is prudent.’
After he had gone Ferox went to the side of the big wooden bed with its high canopy.
‘Ugly old thing,’ Lepidina told him. ‘It was left behind by the previous commander and his family – and no doubt by everyone else back to the fool who bought it.’
The girl was young, fourteen or fifteen at a guess, and she had an unremarkable face. Her hair was dark brown and a little thin, her staring eyes small and grey in colour. Drained of blood her skin was white, but her lips were dark and mottled and stains on the bed beside her showed that she had frothed at the mouth. Ferox leaned over and sniffed, and heard his boot crush something. It was a piece of mistletoe, and when he smelled it there was the trace of other things as well. He guessed that one was nightshade, and that meant they had forced poison into the poor child.
The centurion pulled back the covers, grimacing at the stink of excrement. The corpse was naked, save for a bracelet of cheap stones, and there was no other trace of injury. Someone had drugged her, placed her in the bed and then slit her throat. She had not been dead when it had happened, so the cut had bled freely and she had fouled herself.
Sulpicia Lepidina had covered her eyes with one hand and sounded as if she was praying.
‘You should not be here, my lady,’ Ferox said.
She looked up, stern and proud again. ‘This is my house. I must know everything that happens here. Everything. Privatus?’
‘Mistress.’
‘Go and find out who saw the girl and our guest yesterday. We will need to see them.’
‘Yes, mistress.’ The chamberlain left, and Lepidina began to look at the clothes and boxes on a table in the corner of the room. Ferox wondered whether to talk to her about what had happened, but he did not know the right words, so got on with the matter in hand.
He drew the blankets back over the dead girl and closed her eyes. It was the least he could do and did not make him feel any better. He tried to look for signs in the room. There were some scuffs on the floorboards that looked fresh, which suggested the hobnailed boots of soldiers, but that might mean no more than a recent visit by the prefect to his lover. Nearer the window the boards were wet from damp seeping up from the ground and there was a print or two, faint, but showing traces of at least two boots – one markedly smaller than the other.
‘Look at this.’ Sulpicia Lepidina was holding up a writing tablet. As Ferox took it he saw that her eyes were moist. She must have gripped it tightly because her thumbs had left deep smudges in the wax coating on the surface of the thin wooden sheet – made from silver ash by its feel and colour.
Vegetus, assistant slave of Montanus, the slave of the August Emperor and sometime slave of Iucundus, has bought and received by mancipium the girl Fortunata, or by whatever name she is known, by nationality a Diablintian, from Albicanus, for six hundred denarii. And that the girl in question is transferred in good health, that she is warranted not to be liable to wander or run away, but that if anyone lays claim to the girl in question or to any share in her…
He did not bother to read on. He had seen hundreds of similar documents, recording the sale and purchase of slaves. Somewhere there was surely another document announcing her manumission. Until now he had not thought of Vegetus, who had also made the jump from slave to free man.
‘Do you think that she is dead?’ The question was direct and he knew that the lady was not asking about the corpse in the bed.
‘I cannot say. We may find her.’
‘You can forget trust if you lie to me as plainly as that,’ she said.
‘There is not much hope,’ he admitted. ‘We might be able to catch them.’
‘And I might one day forget that you are a pig as well as a good man.’ She waved him down when he tried to speak. ‘I did not like the woman. How could I? Husbands stray and that is the way of the world. I do not take it personally. How could I after last night?’ There was a thin smile. ‘Nor did she commend herself to me in any other way. Just a foolish little whore who flung herself at men – even you if I remember that dinner last month.’
That was a surprise, for he had not thought anyone had noticed.
‘It does not matter.’ Lepidina’s voice was sad. ‘She was a guest in my house and that does matter. Murderers came over my threshold and they killed this child and abducted her owner. Perhaps they have killed her too.’
She began to sob, shoulders quivering. Ferox glanced quickly at the door, was relieved to see that Privatus had closed it behind him and he went and clasped her to him. Her head was on his shoulder and he felt her body shaking. One hand clasped her and the other smoothed her hair.
‘It was not your fault,’ he said. ‘Never your fault.’
Sulpicia Lepidina lifted her head and he
kissed her on the cheek and soothed her. ‘It’s all right, it was not your fault,’ he repeated over and over again. Ferox still could not tell just what this clever aristocrat wanted, or what she really thought of him, but she was in his arms and at that moment all he wanted was to comfort her and make her smile again. ‘It was not your fault. I am to blame.’
She stared at him, puzzled and unconvinced.
‘I should have thought more clearly. They were looking for you, and all I wished to do was save you. Your husband as well, for that is my duty, but I could not bear the thought of them taking you, of them…’
‘My husband told me why you think they attacked me in my carriage,’ she said. ‘I assumed they just wanted my jewels – and perhaps my aged body.’ The tears had stopped, and she tried to laugh at her poor joke.
‘Then you know the horror of it all,’ Ferox said. ‘I thought only of stopping them, and when we arrived last night and found the praetorium raided all that mattered was to see you safe. It was my only thought.’
Her smile was a little warmer this time. ‘You had other thoughts once you found me.’
‘Yes, and while we…’ He trailed off for the guilt engulfed him. ‘I should have gone back to the fort. Checked that all was well. Instead I did not and they got away.’
‘How could you have known?’ She reached up and stroked his cheek.
‘It’s my job to know, and my job to think. I am tasked with keeping the peace in this region and I have failed. Do you not understand?’ He was surprised at how much this wounded him, striking at a pride he thought long gone.
She gave a slight shake of her head.
‘They thought they had you. It is the only explanation. Here is a big room, with a rich woman in it. They were sent to snatch the prefect’s wife and they found a lady in a big bed in his house. “Blood of king, blood of queen.” Just because you were safe did not mean that there was no more danger.’
She pulled free, as if to think more clearly. ‘There was no attack on my husband.’
‘There was on Longinus.’ It all seemed so simple. ‘If they knew who he really is then that is their king’s blood – though in truth he was too dangerous for them.’ One thought followed another. ‘The mongrel!’ he said angrily. ‘It was him.’
‘I do not follow.’
‘Longinus, or Civilis, or whoever the rogue is. He knew what was happening, got you to safety, protected the children and your husband, but sacrificed the others.’
‘He is a fine man and we owe him much.’
Perhaps the lady had known what he was doing? The idea certainly did not appear to disturb her. Ferox stared into her eyes, but could not read what was behind them.
‘That fine man also staked out Fortunata as a decoy,’ he said. ‘Made sure Privatus forgot to take her to safety, knew your husband would be too careless and then too drunk to bother. He used her to save you.’
‘It is all because of me.’ The tears came again.
‘No, for you. Perhaps I would have done the same if I had to make the choice,’ he said in grudging admiration. ‘It was not your fault or his fault, but mine, to be so besotted that I failed everyone last night.’
A knock on the door ended the conversation. They spoke to the slaves, but learned little more and Ferox remained convinced that he was right. Prolonged searching discovered the remaining maid fast asleep and snoring in an empty box in one of the stables. There was no trace of Fortunata.
‘How could they have got her out past the guards?’ Cerialis asked of no one in particular.
‘Easier last night than almost any other in the year,’ Ferox said. ‘No one saw a cart or anyone carrying something bulky in a sack, so my guess is that she was inside one of the straw figures.’
The prefect went even paler and sent men to look at the remains – before dawn all the effigies were burned as part of the ritual. He was relieved when the men returned to say that there was no sign of anyone hidden within the burned figures, but then another party arrived and said that they had found a big figure of a cow tipped on its side near the edge of the canabae. Ferox remembered it, which made him think that they had got away even earlier than he had guessed.
‘I need to see if they left a trail,’ he told them, but there were more delays before he set out with Vindex and half a dozen Batavian troopers who looked almost sober. They had to wait to leave the main gate as an officer and his escort clattered through into the fort. It was Flaccus and he gave a friendly wave as he passed.
The trail was easy to follow and it took them westwards.
Vindex was not happy. ‘Ten of my lads were at the fort waiting for us to come back, just as you ordered,’ he explained. ‘Now they are told that they cannot leave Vindolanda until the details of the attack are established. What’s up? Are they prisoners?’
Ferox had been afraid of this. He had not yet mentioned to anyone else the potion of mistletoe and nightshade or the double death inflicted on the slave girl. He wondered why they had not added the third death of strangulation to make this a proper sacrifice, but then these people were druids and many other things as well, who invoked Isis and used magic from the east and not everything they did followed the old rules.
‘We really are humped, aren’t we?’ Vindex said when he told him.
Half an hour before they got there Ferox knew where the trail was heading. At last they saw the two standing stones, and between the Mother and Daughter there was a woman.
‘Bastards,’ Vindex gasped when they first saw her, and his anger grew as they came close. ‘Bastards, bastards, bastards.’
Two of the Batavians vomited there and then, and another did the same thing a moment later. The soldiers cursed and swore and screamed out the vengeance they would wreak.
‘Bastards,’ Vindex said again.
Ferox said nothing. This was his failure and his fault. If the thought of this being done to Sulpicia Lepidina was a nightmare too appalling to admit, that was little consolation. He had let this happen. Samhain was not yet done, but he felt as if hope was slipping back to the Otherworld with the rest of the spirits. He had failed. These swine were butchering victims in his territory and he was not stopping them. One hand gripped the handle of his sword and he itched to use it.
XXV
FOR ONCE, CAVALRYMEN did not object to digging. Ferox rode to a farm half a mile away and borrowed two spades and a pick because they had no tools. The family living there were nervous, and happy to hand over anything as long as it made him leave. When he got back every man took off his cloak and they wrapped the mutilated body round tightly and buried Fortunata in a deep grave. Such sights needed to be buried away, out of sight. They gathered the local grey stones and piled them over the grave, while one soldier found a fallen tree trunk and carved her name into the wood. They dug another pit, and raised the wooden monument at her head. Vegetus would be able to find his wife’s resting place with ease. Ferox hoped that he could be persuaded not to unearth the body for cremation. Better that he never know what they had done.
It took them several hours and barely a word was said as they all took turns working. It was almost sunset by the time they returned to Vindolanda and still no one spoke. Ferox tried not to imagine the freedwoman’s screams, for she would not have lost consciousness for some time.
The fort was busier than when they had left, with working parties labouring away so that there was already little trace of the previous night’s festivities. A long convoy of ox carts and pack mules was going through the main gate, so they went around through the canabae to find another way in. Sentries at the western gateway, the porta principalis sinistra, challenged them, accepted the password and then saluted with fervent precision, and Ferox had the sense of children caught out in mischief and now hoping to make amends. He began to understand when he saw the soldiers standing guard in front of the principia. Twenty of them were horsemen in highly polished scale armour and plumed helmets. Their shields were mixed – oval, hexagonal and rectangul
ar side by side – and carried the symbols of half a dozen different units. They had on matching dark blue cloaks and this marked them as the governor’s singulares, his bodyguard of picked cavalrymen drawn from the best of the army in the province. Alongside them stood a similar number of Batavians, who for all their size could not match the splendour of the governor’s men.
‘You’re to go in straightaway, sir,’ the optio in charge of the Batavians told Ferox as soon as he rode up. ‘Provincial legate’s orders,’ he added, evidently relishing the prestige of their visitor. As Ferox went into the headquarters, a soldier led him to the room normally used as a classroom. Inside were Cerialis, Rufinus, Claudius Super and the Tribune Flaccus as well as a dozen senior officers he did not know. An even greater surprise sat near the back.
‘Glad you are back,’ Crispinus whispered as Ferox took the camp chair beside him.
‘Surprised to see you, my lord.’
The young aristocrat grinned. His face was dirty, the grime giving it lines so that in his tiredness he looked twice his real age, and more like a man who ought to have grey hair.
‘If you do not mind me saying, sir, you look terrible.’
‘Better than the horses I rode, I can tell you. I’ve killed two getting here.’ There was a pride in his voice that the centurion disliked. ‘Only got here an hour ago. Didn’t expect such exalted company.’
‘Then why did you hurry?’
‘Thought you might need my help.’
‘Silence there!’ The voice was deep and the speaker had not shouted, but even so it carried to the back of the room. Lucius Neratius Marcellus, Legatus Augusti, vir clarissimus and former consul, was not a big man. He was thin-faced, thin-limbed and Ferox guessed that he was barely five feet tall, yet he dominated the room. Appointed to the post at the start of the year, the new governor had not set foot in Britannia until the autumn, but the impression this had created of lethargy vanished as the little man paced up and down, never still for a moment and always talking. He spoke first of the situation in the wider empire, of the hard work the princeps was doing to ensure peace and stability throughout the provinces. With the deified Nerva taken from us far too soon, his son would secure his legacy by his strength, justice and virtue. There would be no chaos, no civil war.
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