by M. K. Hume
Aeron nodded. ‘Have you considered that the choice of the midden as a dumping site could have been a calculated insult, Constantine?’
‘The name is Constantinus, Your Highness,’ the adjutant corrected him carefully.
Aeron noticed the younger man frowning, so this Roman was either very angry, or was hiding something that he was reluctant to discuss. The king was immediately on his guard.
‘My apologies, Centurion, for no offence was intended.’
The adjutant showed surprise at the use of his given name for the king was merely reassuring the young officer that he was innocent of any dereliction of duty. It was as if Aeron had peered into his mind and gazed at his darkest thoughts.
‘No offence was taken, Highness.’ He smiled agreeably, although his mind was racing. ‘The perpetrators of this murder carried out a calculated insult when they threw the bodies of their victims into the town’s midden. I cannot decide whether this affront was aimed specifically at my commander or was an attack against all Romans. But the betrothal of your foster-daughter to Marcus cannot be a coincidence. I don’t believe in chance.’
‘Nor do I, Constantinus! Nor do I!’
Before Aeron could speak further, Queen Endellion, who had been listening quietly, broke confidently into the conversation.
‘What perversions drove your master to take such frivolous chances, sir? If you’ll excuse my forwardness, Marcus appeared to be a man with a healthy regard for his own skin.’
‘Yes, he was,’ Constantinus replied slowly once his sluggish brain recalled that this queen was the daughter of one of Emperor Maximus’s most influential friends. Little wonder that she was forceful.
‘My commander was unusually careful with his person, Highness, but unfortunately he was indiscriminate in his sexual liaisons with inferiors.’
Embarrassed at having to discuss these matters with a woman, and ashamed, Constantinus was standing rigidly and every muscle was at attention as he struggled to control his tongue. Aeron, realising what was troubling the Roman, shot a glance at Endellion that suggested she should exercise tact and leave the men to their discussion.
Endellion took the hint and excused herself on the grounds of needing to inform Severa of the changed circumstances in her marital expectations. As she watched the Roman from the corner of her eye, she noticed that he visibly relaxed as she prepared to leave them. Aeron would discuss the juicier details with her at a later time.
Constantinus indicated that Marcus had a penchant for pain, and he gave the king an explanation of his master’s sexual proclivities.
‘He enjoyed having punishments inflicted on his person during intricate sexual games that would nauseate most men with normal tastes. I’ve heard tales that Marcus enjoyed crawling on his belly on the floor and fawned over disgusting whores who would whip him if he was slow to carry out their instructions. On other occasions, he gained sexual fulfilment after being tied and restrained so he couldn’t protect himself, and the harridans would be encouraged to urinate on him or commit other disgusting perversions. I’ve heard that far more grotesque behaviour is permitted in the salons of Rome. My commander came from this world, but Britannia cannot be equated with Rome. Marcus had flaws that would sicken most military men and, without doubt, most of his fellows in the officer corps. When coupled with a lack of common morality and the hubris that came with his birthright, he was a Roman who had made a host of enemies.’
‘So,’ Aeron responded, for he was surprised at the young Roman’s frankness. ‘You believe that Marcus’s assassination was caused by some unknown person or persons who became part of a sexual tryst, or his death was arranged by an assassin who had been suborned into killing him by a third party who would gain politically from his death?’
Aeron’s expression was clear and his questions were sharp.
‘Exactly! But personal vengeances must also be considered. Marcus made many enemies on all sides of Britannia’s politics, as any competent observer would agree. At best, my commander has shown himself to be an arrogant and foolhardy man.’
Constantinus paused to consider his next words.
‘The field of potential assassins is very wide and I have no doubt that the number will expand as we investigate our commander’s last hours in Corinium. If you are agreeable, I intend to torture the whores and bodyguards who have been working in this particular brothel. We have a reputation for success in dealing with malcontents.’
Aeron had heard descriptions of Roman techniques, so he agreed that most villains would confess to their crimes rather than undergo a serious Roman interrogation. Many innocent men would also choose a clean death for crimes they hadn’t committed rather than experiencing a lingering fate where they were tortured into submission.
The tribal king nodded slowly. ‘You may do as you see fit, Centurion. I’m not in favour of inflicting unnecessary pain, so I’d prefer to remain ignorant of your methods to loosen the tongues of criminals. I’ll confine myself to informing Severa of the changes to her circumstances.’
Constantinus breathed a sigh of relief. He had been dreading the task of informing Marcus’s betrothed that her intended husband had been murdered. Still . . . !
In the small chapel in the centre of Corinium, the body of Marcus Britannicus was washed and oiled, his gaping wounds were hidden by a fine white robe that doubled as a shroud and his hair was carefully cleansed, combed and styled. Coins were placed over his eyelids. Once the corpse was prepared for the funeral pyre, Constantinus surreptitiously slipped two silver coins under his master’s tongue in order that his soul could pay the ferryman whose vessel would carry Marcus’s spirit across the River Styx. Although he was a Christian, Constantinus was a wise man who was prepared to pay lip service to the old gods.
He gave a silent apology to the native priests who were offering prayers for the soul of his commander. Marcus Britannicus had met his fate and the murderous deed had been carried out with considerable expertise and efficiency. The legitimate nominee for the throne of High King of the Britons had scarcely prepared himself to make his mark on the world when he was permanently removed. But Constantinus’s heart hardened as he left the tiny wooden chapel and strode towards the guardhouse where the prisoners had been incarcerated to await their formal interrogation. To kill a Roman officer was a serious crime, especially in an environment where the British lands were under threat from without and within, so he was determined to extract every piece of information, real or imagined, from his suspects.
The whores and their bodyguards had to be involved in the conspiracy, because the assassins had gained entry to the Bower of Beauty with relative ease. Constantinus had carefully examined the brothel’s front door and had found no sign of a forced entry. The commander had been dragged bodily from the ramshackle building, so his prisoners must have observed the assassins during their murderous rampage. With luck, Constantinus would quickly learn the identity of the villains and, if he gained some recognition from the process, then so much the better.
In the cellars of the guardhouse, which also served as the community jail, narrow storage rooms had been converted into cells that allowed prisoners to stand or sit with their chained limbs drawn up above their heads. Other detainees had their hands tied behind them, an agonising position whereby the miscreants were slowly strangled when their chest muscles were unable to expand or contract. Constantinus decided to show a soupcon of mercy by permitting the prisoners to have their hands re-tied in front of their bodies. However, such relief was only temporary, because few of them could expect to survive his ministrations.
As he entered the cellar, he noticed that the brazier in the corner of the normally frigid little room was heating a number of branding irons designed to inflict hideous damage on the flesh of the unfortunate prisoners. With a flicker of disgust, he saw that several of the links of chain near the brazier had been inadvertentl
y heated to a cherry-red colour from their proximity to the hot coals. His unfortunate prisoners must have been experiencing some pain already, but needs must be, when an important personage such as the Roman commander was assassinated.
‘We’ll carry out our interrogation with the women prisoners first, Paulus,’ the adjutant ordered crisply, his face showing nothing of his internal struggle with his conscience. Several soldiers obeyed the decurion’s command and released one of the locked doors so that three of the dishevelled women, in various stages of bluster or terror, were yanked by their chains into the main body of the cellar.
The obese madam spat in Constantinus’s direction and was cuffed for her insult by Paulus. Within moments, she was chained to the stone wall of the cellar with her arms above her head.
‘Come, woman! Theatrics won’t help at a time like this,’ Constantinus warned as the three women were pulled up on their chains until only their straining toes could touch the ground.
Constantinus began to pace up and down the stone flagging in front of the prisoners, taking pains to stay just beyond the reach of the madam’s spittle.
‘Your name, woman?’
She spat again, but Paulus grimaced in disgust and yanked her considerable bulk off the ground.
‘Shall we try again, woman? I can easily discover your names, but the knowledge I intend to extract from you should be learned, ideally, with a minimum of suffering. I advise you to be truthful!’
Constantinus’s words were so reasonable that the grotesque woman, hanging painfully only inches from the ground and weighed down by her own gross folds of fat, tried to flinch away from his icy face. ‘My name is Clidna,’ the woman eventually slurred through her gasping and distorted mouth. ‘I’m a businesswoman. I’m not a killer, so fuck you!’
Paulus had picked up a plaited leather whip with a surface studded with small metal barbs. With a gentle flick of his wrist, he lashed Clidna across her upper thigh. Her flesh parted to release an instant flow of blood and the excruciating pain robbed Clidna of her breath.
‘Mind your manners, Clidna. My master asked you a perfectly reasonable question. He was very polite, so I suggest that you answer his questions in the same way.’ If Paulus felt any reservations about torturing women, his face revealed nothing. With the calm discipline that he always demonstrated when carrying out his duties, he flicked the whip against his boots and small droplets of blood and shreds of flesh fell to the stone floor.
‘I want you to tell me everything you know of Marcus Britannicus, your client, and your dealings with him during his last evening on this earth,’ Constantinus demanded. ‘I intend to interrogate every single person involved in this matter, so telling lies will be a waste of time. We are already aware that one of our comrades had bled inside your house, so you and your friends have earned your deaths. How you die will be entirely up to you.’
Constantinus prayed that Clidna would see sense and reveal all she knew of the assassination plot. A practised twist of the wrist by a strangler and this woman would have a quick and merciful death.
‘Your master sent a messenger to arrange his entertainment. I don’t remember his name but he had fair hair and blue eyes,’ Clidna explained painfully. ‘He was a pretty boy!’
‘Eugenius,’ Paulus stated.
The grotesque woman sobbed with agony. ‘If you want to know what happened, you’ll have to let me down a little so I can breathe.’
Constantinus felt a surge of respect for the gross brothel-owner. Her weight had probably dislocated both of her shoulder blades, to judge by the odd appearance of her upper torso.
‘Lower her down a little so she can stand on her feet,’ Constantinus ordered.
Paulus obeyed, but his face showed an edge of disapproval.
‘I’ve made concessions for your comfort, woman, so answer me quickly.’
Constantinus ceased his pacing and stood directly in front of the madam so he could stare into her muddy eyes.
‘Your Roman friend wanted some special arrangements,’ Clidna explained. She spat out the mucus that had collected in her mouth, but she was careful to aim at the flagging near her swollen feet. ‘We cater for all types at the Bower of Beauty.’ She chuckled thickly at some distant memory until Paulus flicked his whip.
Constantinus shot an admonitory glance at his decurion.
‘Continue, Clidna. Paulus won’t hurt you if you’re truthful.’
‘Your Marcus liked to be dominated, as long as we didn’t really hurt him or leave marks where they could be seen by others. Soft paddles . . . that sort of thing. He had a number of other little games that he wanted to experience and my girls were happy to service him with the pleasures he was seeking, as long as they weren’t hurt for their trouble. Men like him are easy gold for girls like us. Late in the evening, your man came to the Bower of Beauty with his two guards, including the pretty lad with the blue eyes. He was a fine-looking boy, so I’ll be sorry if he’s dead. I’d have fucked him for free!’
Paulus tapped the whip against his leather-clad knees, so Clidna’s eyes widened and she immediately lurched into another line of thought. The blood from her torn leg was dripping on to the stone flagging.
‘Your Marcus was a cultured Roman gentleman on the surface, and he didn’t allow us to forget it. He demanded wine when he arrived, but then referred to our vintage as swill. Still, he drank it! He guzzled some and then told me that my girls were to be brought before him. There are only two girls working at the moment. Clyte and Gwennan were there, so I brought them to him. Our other girl, Dorcas, was visiting an important friend inside the town. Master Marcus wasn’t pleased at her absence, because he wanted all three girls to join him in his little games. He also demanded privacy while he was in my house, so his guards told me that my cook and the kitchen hand would not be required and could leave early. I’d already sent them home, which is why they weren’t arrested when your soldiers arrived.’
‘What are their names?’ Constantinus asked quietly, although he swore inwardly that none of his soldiers had considered the possibility that some servants might already have left the brothel before they carried out their initial investigations.
‘My cook is half-Roman and is called Selwyn, although we call him Little Grandfather. The kitchen hand is Lachie. He’s a bit wanting in the head, just like his brother, Nudd, who works as one of my two guards. Lachie has probably been in hiding since he heard that his brother was arrested. We also have another guard, Lewis, but he seems to have disappeared.’
‘Find them, Paulus,’ Constantinus ordered tightly, although his voice remained calm. Inside, he was seething with temper at the carelessness of his decurion. The Romans had been stupid to discount the involvement of other workers who were absent from the household.
Two legionnaires were sent to carry out this urgent task. They swore to locate Little Grandfather and Lachie, and bring them back to the cells within the hour.
With a sudden change in manner, Clidna began to show an eagerness to provide Constantinus with the sordid details of the evening’s entertainment. This sudden enthusiasm coincided with the arrival in the cell of Clyte, a small dark girl who could lay claim to some prettiness under a rime of dirt and old cosmetics. This young woman was weeping and begging for mercy, so she was soon providing her Roman interrogators with more details of the demands that Marcus made on her.
But the most interesting details were provided by the third girl, Gwennan, who seemed an unlikely whore in a town such as Corinium.
Gwennan was very tall for a woman, with long, cleanly modelled limbs. To Constantinus’s eyes she was graceful, even in the chains that constrained her. He could see that her face was almost beautiful under the cosmetics that encircled her eyes and coloured her pale cheeks. A sharp knife had sliced its way across her forehead at some time in her past, so her right eyebrow was puckered into a perm
anent expression of surprise.
Unfortunately, Gwennan was proud for a low-caste woman and her scornful expression showed that she held a loathing for all men. Constantinus had heard that some prostitutes shared similar hatreds, having received nothing but persecution and cruelty from the men they serviced.
‘I can promise you, girl, that you won’t be tortured if you speak the truth. I want to know if there is anything you can add to what your mistress has already told me?’
‘Does it matter what we say, Roman? You’re going to kill us anyway.’
The adjutant refused to be drawn into more senseless violence unless there were no other options available to him. He knew instinctively that torture would be pointless with this woman.
‘Do you intend to punish me if I speak the truth as I know it?’
Constantinus remained silent.
Resigned to the probability of death, she sighed as the excruciating pain of her stretched arm and shoulder muscles continued to dominate her thoughts.
‘Very well, Roman! I can tell you that your Marcus Britannicus was a cruel and heartless bastard when he was clothed, but he became a snivelling babe when he was naked in the presence of women. But he never fooled me from the moment he arrived. If we were too aggressive, or if we ridiculed his long-held image of himself, that animal would have changed from a fawning worm into a typical beast in the blinking of an eye. He’d have killed me without mercy.’
The adjutant eyed the tall woman with her dirty black hair and her vivid amber eyes, while admiring the way she met his stare and refused to blink or flinch.
‘Were you the woman who was with my commander when he was taken?’
Now, she flinched visibly.
‘Aye, but I had nothing to do with the attack on him. When the outsiders came into my room, your Roman was on his hands and knees in front of me. His hands were only loosely bound so that he was able to kiss my feet when ordered to do so, while I was beating him with a padded whip. It couldn’t even break the skin, but he needed the thought of a little pain to . . . to get it up, you know?’