The Swabian Affair

by Ray Gleason

  I gave Dai a description of Bulla, and he left on his mission. I knew he would not find Bulla, not alive anyway.

  Troucillus was speaking, “Back to your earlier comment, Publicola. The Latin word ‘matrona’ could also refer to a ‘patroness,’ could it not?”

  “A woman patron, Troucillus?” Publicola dismissed the suggestion. “That would be ridiculous. What Roman man would submit to the authority of a woman?”

  Troucillus shrugged, “Be that as it may, Bulla is my lead suspect in the murder of the Aeduan trooper before we crossed the Arar. I suspect his motive is to disrupt this embassy. So, according to the lex parsimoniae, the simplest and, therefore, the most likely, explanation for this act is that Bulla attempted to murder young Insubrecus here to drive a wedge between us and the cadeuhrn and weaken our position in our inevitable confrontation with Ariovistus.”

  “Why would a Roman do anything to advance the cause of a barbarian?” Publicola challenged.

  “Publicola, you speak of Romans as if they were one in mind and goal,” Troucillus dismissed the objection. “We know that is not the case. Cato and the rest of the so-called Optimates in the senate, the ‘Best-Ones,’ are not Caesar’s friends. They understand that military success in Gaul would greatly increase Caesar’s dignitas in Rome and his political advantage. The defeat of a German threat would establish Caesar as a new Marius! Caesar’s fellow triumvir, Pompeius Magnus, certainly does not want to share his repute as Rome’s foremost general. He certainly would not lose any sleep if Caesar were embarrassed, or even killed, by Ariovistus and his rout. So, the simplest explanation is that Bulla is an agent of Caesar’s enemies in Rome.”

  It seemed that Publicola and Troucillus had put the shadowy La Matrona figure totally out of their calculations. I could not. The memory of Gabi ordering her henchman to cut my throat in front of her, so she could see it was “done right,” was fixed in my mind. She had also alluded to the gangster, Milo, and seemed to hint that she had taken over part of his organization.

  Suddenly, I realized that both Troucillus and Publicola were looking at me expectantly.

  “Quid est?” I stammered. “What is it?”

  Publicola gave me a somewhat patronizing smile, “Do you have any questions? Perhaps the shock of your being attacked is affecting you.”

  That comment made me feel obligated to ask something, anything, just to show that patrician gobshite I wasn’t losing it because I had a scratch on my arm. “I . . . er . . . Trocille . . . you lost me when you referred to a lex parsimoniae. The law of frugality? What is that?”

  Troucillus smiled and nodded. “It’s a concept used by lawyers based on a reading of Aristotle’s Analytika Hystera: ‘All other things being equal, we may assume the supremacy of the determination derived from the fewest assumptions or guesses.’”

  “In other words, the simplest explanation is the best,” I suggested.

  Troucillus nodded, “Close enough!”

  At that point, Metius entered the room. He nodded toward Bran, ignored Rabria, and asked Publicola, “You summoned me, Tribune?”

  Up to this point, I had not closely observed Metius. He was of average height, about five Roman pedes and five or so unciae. His hair was dark brown, shot through with gray. He had heavy, dark eyebrows. He was a bit jowly from a few too many evenings in a caupona and had a face that looked like it had never learned to smile. He wore a dark green, Roman-style tunic with half-sleeves over a pair of light woolen Gallic bracae of a brownish color. His boots were Roman caligae but lighter than the military issue. He wore a wide, brown belt with a silver buckle. From his left hip hung a pugio in a plain leather sheath; from his right, a small leather marsupium.

  In other words, our lead spy was in the costume of a Roman merchant in eastern Gaul.

  “Where’s Bulla?” Publicola demanded.

  “Bulla?” Metius actually looked surprised by the question. “Why would you want to know where Bulla is?”

  “Why I want to know is none of your affair, Meti,” Publicola pushed him. “Just tell me where he is!”

  Metius shrugged, “I don’t know.”

  I was beginning to suspect that Metius was ignoring the intent of Publicola’s question.

  “When’s the last time you saw him?” Publicola pressed him.

  “The ninth hour, just before I escorted my contacts here to the feast.”

  Contacts! There was that word again. Now I was sure Metius was hedging.

  “And, where was that?” Publicola pressed.

  “In one of the cauponae in the lower town . . . the sign of the three horses, I think,” Metius stated.

  “Have you seen him up here since?” Publicola asked.

  “Up here?” Metius challenged. “I’ve already answered that question, Publicola . . . What is this all about?”

  “Your man, Bulla, attacked a Roman officer,” Publicola spat. “And you will address me as ‘Tribune,’ Insitor!”

  Insitor? That was a term usually reserved for dishonest traders, grifters, con men. Publicola was playing his nobility card a bit heavily here.

  “Bulla did what?” Metius started. “Bulla would not act on his own unless—” Whatever Metius was about to say, he thought better of it.

  But, he wasn’t going to ignore Publicola’s barb, “You forget yourself, Publicola! Your mission here is to mesmerize the Grunni with your broad purple stripe and your flashy armor, like a peacock charms a peahen with its feathery ass . . . My portfolio comes directly from Caesar himself.”

  “Are you sure of that, Meti?” Troucillus interrupted. “Caesar, and not someone else down in Rome? Pompeius, perhaps?”

  Metius’ face turned corpse-white. His hand actually dropped down to the hilt of his pugio. Then, he seemed to recover himself. “I have no idea where Bulla is,” he stated. “I have not seen him since the ninth hour.”

  With that, he turned and left.

  We did not move east the next day. Publicola announced that he wanted to rest the horses one more day. I suspected the real reason was he didn’t want to risk running into a horde of Germans with a hungover troop.

  Bulla was not found along the riverfront. Bran ordered a search of the lower town, but I was sure that Metius’ hitman had escaped. To where, I had no idea.

  XIII.

  De Itinere ad Castrum Bellum

  OUR MARCH TO BELFORT

  We started east toward the Gate at the first hour of the next day. It was dies Veneris, the day of Venus, the day of the capricious goddess, always an inauspicious day to begin a new enterprise.

  I had spent most of the morning the day before at our horse lines in the camp of the Roman cavalry turma outside the walls of Vesantio. I was determined to train the black stallion that I had taken from the Boii thegn at Bibracte.

  This was also the horse that had almost killed me by kicking me in the head. And, he apparently had not forgotten.

  At times, the horse would obey me. I would ride him in circles and figure eights around the grassy fields with my hands in the air, and he would react to the promptings of my heels, knees, and thighs as if he had been in the Roman army since he was a colt.

  Then, he’d pull something.

  Six or seven times, he stopped suddenly, throwing me forward into the horns of my saddle. Once, he fell forward onto his front knees. I went tumbling past his right ear and into the turf. Luckily, my fall was cushioned by the long grass and a pile of freshly dropped horse merda. When I recovered my feet, the horse was standing, his head down in my direction. He shook his head violently and snorted at me as if he were snickering. I wondered for a heartbeat whether the horse had actually aimed me at that pile of shit.

  And, so the game continued.

  There was a boy from the town watching our antics. He was about eight years old, tow-headed, and wearing the brown, rough-spun tunic and trousers of a dar fu’thir, a slave. He seemed to be enjoying the show.

  I was doing circles at a canter when the horse suddenly stopped and t
hrew his hindquarters to the left. As I tumbled forward, the left front saddle horn caught me below the ribs, knocking the wind out of me. As I fell, I managed to plant my left heel in the ground as my body spun around, and I landed initially on my arse. As I tumbled down onto my back, my body folded and my knees almost slammed into my chest. As usual, the horse watched my gymnastics then snorted at me. I then realized that this was the way the perverse beast laughed.

  Naturally, the boy was laughing. “He good Kraut! He try kill you, Roman!” he said in a guttural Gah’el.

  I was bumped, bruised, embarrassed, and still struggling with the aftereffects of last night’s drinking, so I wasn’t in the mood to be mocked by a slave.

  “You could do better I suppose, boy?” I snapped back, brushing clods of turf and grass off my military tunic.

  “Where you have horse?” he asked.

  “Have horse?” I repeated. Then I felt the need to boast: “Oh . . . I took him in battle . . . from a German chief.”

  “Ah! Him Kraut horse,” the boy nodded.

  The boy, all four pedes of him, marched directly over to the black stallion, who actually backed up three or four steps at his approach. I was about to intervene, thinking the huge black beast would stomp the kid into mush, when he said in a load voice, “Hors!”

  The stallion stopped and seemed to come to attention. His ears came straight up, and he dropped his head to look directly at the boy. “Aet stande!” commanded my little rescuer.

  The horse raised his head and froze. The boy jumped up into the saddle. Talking to the stallion in what I now recognized as a dialect of German, the boy put the horse through the same paces I had been attempting with little success.

  Finally, the boy walked the horse over to me and jumped down from the saddle. “Him Kraut horse! Talk him Germanly; him listen you good!”

  The boy handed me the reins and walked back in the direction of the town. As he walked away, he called over his shoulder, “Him name ‘Beorn’. . . ‘Hero’ . . . Him listen you now . . . maybe.”

  I decided that I had had enough for the day without having to contend with a German-speaking horse named Beorn who was part of a Gallic cavalry unit serving the Roman army.

  I had just finished brushing Beorn down when Manius Talus found me. “There you are, Insubrece! I’ve been lookin’ all over for yas. They want ya down at headquarters, stat’!”

  “Stat’?” I asked. “Something up?”

  “You could say that,” Manius nodded. “Some merchants come up river with a tale that Caesar’s army’s mutinied. They’re sittin’ outside o’ Ventum Cavillonum refusin’ to march another step. They say the Krauts have them soilin’ their loincloths!”

  Manius and I practically double-timed back to the town and up the hill to the cadeuhrn’s dun. We found Publicola and Troucillus in the meeting room with Bran, his wife, and Aneirin. They were questioning a civilian, a merchant by his dress. It took me a few heartbeats to recognize him. It was Grennadios, the Greek from Massalia, whom I had detained north of Bibracte.

  “I tell you,” he was saying to Publicola, “it’s true . . . Caesar’s army is in revolt . . . They refuse to go a step farther . . . Even the military tribunes are keeping to their tents . . . The centurions are refusing to assemble their troops . . . They’re demanding that Caesar return to the provincia and leave off chasing the Germans back over the Rhenus.”

  Bran’s face was as gray as a corpse. If Caesar did not arrive, he and his people were finished.

  “What do you think, Publicola?” Troucillus asked.

  Publicola hesitated, then shrugged. “I am a Roman soldier with orders that I will obey unless they are rescinded. I will send a section of Manius’ cavalry back to Caesar for instructions, but until I receive new orders, I will continue my mission.”

  “That is madness—” Grennadios started.

  “I thank you for your information, Merchant!” Publicola stopped him. “You may go now!”

  Grennadios shrugged, got up, and walked toward the doors. Then, he saw me. As if expecting to meet me, he placed a hand on my shoulder and quietly said, “Evra said you would be here . . . How she knows what she knows, I have no idea . . . She wants to speak to you . . . She says it’s important . . . Come to us tonight . . . We are stopping at a caupona in the town at the sign of the green stag . . . Ask anyone . . . They’ll know the place.”

  I nodded and repeated, “The green stag.”

  Publicola was speaking, “It’s about time you got here, Decurio . . . You’ve heard?”

  I nodded, “Mutiny . . . Do we have any proof of this?”

  Publicola shook his head, “Just the tales carried by these merchants . . . I plan to depart first hour tomorrow . . . Both of you . . . brief your men . . . I want no panic . . . Tell them these are just wild tales, not to be believed . . . Caesar and the army are on the march behind us.”

  Both Manius and I nodded, “A’mperi’tu!”

  “Bene!” Publicola nodded. “Mani Decurio! I want you to detail five men . . . your fastest horses . . . Get them back to the army and find out what’s really going on back there . . . Their rally point with us will be in the Gate . . . at Castrum Bellum . . . Do that stat’!”

  “A’mperi’tu!” Manius snapped and bolted out of the room.

  When he had gone, Publicola asked me, “Insubrece Decurio! Do you anticipate any problems with the Sequani?”

  I shrugged, “Over rumors? No! The Sequani are committed to Caesar by his gifts . . . They will go forward.” Then, I hestitated.

  “Quid vis dicere, tu?” Publicola prompted me. “What else?”

  “If the Grunni break through to the Arar and Caesar does not stop them, the Sequani will look to their own people first,” I stated.

  I saw Troucillus nod and say, “That’s only to be expected.”

  Publicola was not happy with the answer, but he shrugged and said, “I will not make a military decision based on rumor . . . We depart for Castrum Bellum and the Gate tomorrow . . . first light.”

  At the tenth hour, I was in the lower town, looking for the green stag. It was easy to find, right off the main road leading up to the cadeuhrn’s dun from the city gate. I entered the main room. After my eyes adjusted to the lamplight and the fumes from the rancid lamp oil, I spotted the caupo, the landlord, across the room. He was behind a plank bar, watching over the beer kegs and the cash.

  I was halfway across to him to ask after Grennadios when I felt a touch on my elbow. I turned. It was Evra, the woman from the island of the dead. In the dim, smoky light of the caupona, I could see her eyes were a blue so deep that they seemed to fade into black.

  “You come . . . good,” she said in a heavily accented Latin. “Follow.”

  She turned and walked back into the caupona. She stopped at what appeared to be a curtained alcove, drew back the drape, and stared back at me. It was then I realized that I had remained standing in the middle of the tap room. As I walked over toward her, she disappeared behind the curtain. I followed her in.

  She sat in the shadows at the back of the darkened alcove, a cave really. A single lamp sputtered on a wooden table.

  “Sit,” she told me.

  I did as I was told. She stared directly into my eyes for a few heartbeats, then placed a white stone on the table. It seemed to glow with its own light, more translucent than white. It seemed to promise blue and purple depths.

  “Hold stone in hand,” she told me.

  I did. It felt warm, either from Evra’s touch or a heat of its own, I couldn’t tell.

  “Nunc da mi!” she demanded, thrusting her open right hand at me. “Now give to me!”

  I handed the stone over to her.

  She closed her fingers tightly around it and brought her hand to her breast. She closed her eyes and appeared to drift away to another place. All the noise of the caupona seemed to fade away with her. Our darkened alcove became an endless black cave, a universe of darkness. I felt as if I were looking at our ineff
ective lamp across a great, gloomy chasm. We remained like this almost beyond time. Then, with a moan, she drew in a great breath. Her eyes were open, staring straight into mine. Somehow our faces were only inches apart.

  “Anu has spoken!” she began, but her voice did not seem to enter through my ears; it was present in my mind. “Anu has spoken . . . Anu, god mother . . . sister-self, Eriu . . . red-haired queen . . . She holds you close to her breast . . . The great queen must lose a son . . . Morgana, sister-self must have blood . . . The black-haired queen weeps in darkness . . . Go to the east . . . dark forests await . . . dark hills . . . cold places . . . Dark ones will not come near you . . . The land of sun is danger . . . In the east . . . the queen of the sun tears at her hair . . . Beware the fair one, son of Caesar . . . Protect the dark one, son of Caesar . . . The red-haired queen will find you . . . a death to be avenged . . . a death to be appeased . . . Bring to the light, son of Caesar . . . Death becomes life.”

  She shuddered and opened her hand. The white stone was gone, as if it had merged into her breast.

  Then, she was gone.

  I didn’t see her slip out of the alcove. It was as if I had blinked her away.

  I rose and pulled back the curtain. I was back in the taproom of the green stag. I could hear the click of ceramic jugs on drinking cups, the muffled voices of drinkers, the rattle of dice on wooden tabletops. Evra was gone. No one seemed to notice me. I wondered whether Evra’s spell had rendered me invisible.

  Then, Grennadios called my name and brought me out of my reverie. I looked across the room and spotted him at a table along one of the walls. He was holding up a cup, inviting me to drink.

  As I sat down, he asked, “Has Evra seen you?”

  “Evra!” I said. “Was she not just here? Did you not see her?”

  “No,” Grennadios answered, pouring wine into the cup for me. “I did not see you come in either.”

  “We were there! In the alcove,” I said gesturing across the room. “She just left me. You must have seen her.”

  Grennadios just shook his head. “The woman comes and goes like smoke. What did she say to you?”