I fell silent. I was so unused to talking that presenting these details in an ordered form had tired me out. I could see Vitalis watching me closely, though after his first attempt he made no more suggestions for restoring me to civilization prematurely. My choice of comrade had been an intelligent one; I could see he understood the implications of what I had said.
"How do they get away with it, Falco?"
"It's a completely enclosed community; no outsiders are allowed."
"But they have a civilian settlement"
"Where every baker, barber and blacksmith comes under licence, specifically to supply the mines! They're all human; pretty well on arrival they are all suborned."
"So what do those young dreamers at the fort think they're playing at?"
There was a small fortress overlooking the settlement, an outpost of the Second Augusta which was supposed to supervise the mines. I smiled at Vitalis for his assumption that immediately after he himself retired, all military discipline went to the dogs.
"That's the centurion in you talking! No one can blame them. All operations are subject to inspection, of course"
"Both officers and men should be regularly changed"
"They are. And I've seen details coming down from the fort to peer around. I imagine they are hampered by the fact ingots look identical: how can they tell whether what they are shown even contains silver or not?"
"How can anyone tell?"
"Ah! The ingots that are stolen before cupellation are specially stamped: 'TCL TRIP' four times."
"Falco, you've seen it?"
"I've seen them here and tell the procurator Flavius, I've seen one like that in Rome!"
It was still lying in Lenia's bleaching vat.
Rome! I lived there once…
Our snatched conversation was about to be disturbed. My present life had taught me to smell trouble on the wind like a forest deer. I touched Vitalis on the arm to warn him, and our faces closed guardedly.
"'lo, Vitalis! Has that punk admitted anything?"
It was Cornix.
This Cornix was an obscene bully of a foreman, a real specialist in administering tortures to slaves. A slab-shouldered sadist with a face marbled like a side of beef by his depraved life. He had picked on me mercilessly from the moment I arrived, but owned just enough working ooze in his chickpea brain to be wary in case one day I went back to some previous life and talked.
Vitalis shrugged. "Nothing. Tight as a virgin's apron string. Shall I leave him a bit longer? Is he any use to you?"
"Never was," Cornix lied.
Quite untrue. They had worn me to a runt by now, but I had been well fed and sturdy when I first arrived. I scowled at the ground while Vitalis and Cornix pretended to negotiate.
"Take a thorough squint at him," Rufrius Vitalis urged the foreman scornfully. I stood there looking pitiful. "Another few weeks of fog and frost up here and he'll be pleading to go home. But I won't get much back for him in his present state. can't you fatten the bastard up a bit? I'd be willing to go halves on any reward…"
On this welcome hint, Cornix promptly agreed he would have me transferred to lighter work. When Vitalis left, with a curt nod to me as his only possible goodbye, I had ended my stint as a picker, and was about to be made up to a driver instead.
"Your lucky day, Chirpy!" Cornix leered unpleasantly. "Let's go and celebrate!"
Avoiding the privilege of being selected as Cornix's partner in sexual dalliance had so far occupied a lot of my ingenuity.
I told the brute I had a headache, and was violently kicked for my pains.
XXVII
Driving seemed quite straightforward. We used mules rather than oxen, because of the hills. A cartload comprised four ingots. They were a dead weight and transporting them was fiendishly slow.
I was tucked in behind the leader at the front of the train. The excuse was that a new boy didn't know the way. Really, until you proved yourself a trusty it was a precaution against escape.
No one would ever be a trusty who worked as a slave in the mines. Still, I had learned by then to look as much like a trusty as anybody else.
There was one final check to stop anyone thieving the Empire's loot. On leaving the mines we drove past the fort, where the soldiers counted every ingot and drew up a manifest. This manifest remained with the silver all the way to Rome. There was one good road out of Vebiodunum, the road back to the frontier. Every cart capable of carrying bars had to pass along that road, for the crossways were too narrow and too rough to bear the weight. That meant every single ingot that ever left the mines was registered on an official manifest.
Our destination was the military port at Abona. To reach the great Estuary, we first turned our backs on it, drove ten miles east to the frontier highway, followed it northwards to the sacred springs of Sul, then west again along another spur round the third side of a square say thirty Roman miles in all. Heavy barges drew up the Estuary for the ingots, which they hauled round the Two Promontaries and then, under guard from the British Fleet, right along the Channel to cross Europe overland. Most of the silver went south through Germany, where the dense military presence guaranteed its route.
I knew Abona already.
Nothing had changed. The place where Petronius Longus and I once spent two drizzling years in a customs post. It was still there, still manned by teenage soldiers with the dye brilliant in their brand-new cloaks, striding about like lords, ignoring the sad slaves who brought in the Empire's treasure. These lads all had pinched faces and runny noses, but unlike our private weasels in the mines all of them could count. They checked off our manifest, counting the ingots carefully into their pound; when the barges arrived, they counted them back out. Heaven help the contractor Triferus if ever anything failed to match.
It always matched. But it would. After we first drove the waggons out along the road from Veb, we always stopped for the drivers to relieve themselves at an upland village just before the main frontier. We stopped at this village whether anybody needed to or not.
The manifest was altered while we were there.
Now the end lay in sight for me.
After three trips, I worked my way far enough down the regular line of waggons to be able to see what happened once we left that bundle of wattle shacks where a corrupt clerk doctored the paperwork. As the main line turned north on the frontier, the last couple of carts silently peeled away south. For the thieves to use the military road might appear foolish, though it was a good fast highway giving access to every beachhead on the southern coast. Regular transports which passed openly week after week would be waved through cheerily by any troops they met. But moving the Second Augusta away up to Glevum said clearly enough that this section of road was no longer actively patrolled.
I was back on form now. I had a clear goal: winning sufficient trust to be put to driving one of those carts that slipped off south. I was desperate to discover where they went. If we found their embarkation port we could pinpoint the ship that carried the stolen pigs to Rome; the ship and its owner, who must be in the conspiracy.
I was old enough to recognize the risk that my nerve might fail. After three months of hard labour and cruelty on the worst diet in the Empire, I was in poor physical and mental shape. Still, a new challenge works wonders. My concentration revived. I kept my nerve under grim control.
What I overlooked was the Didius Falco luck.
It was at the end of January that I won my chance. Half the workers were confined to the slave sheds, shamming sick, some so effectively they had given up and died. Those of us who kept on our feet felt rough, but it was worth the extra effort since there were more rations available if you did. Eating the stuff was hideous, but it helped fight off the cold.
There had been a light snowfall, with much in certainty whether the week's transports should be sent out. The weather cleared so it seemed as though the really bitter grip of winter had yet to descend. A last-minute consignment was despatched with a scratch cre
w. Even the waggon master was a substitute. I ended up in the last cart but one. Nothing was said, but I knew what it meant.
We paraded at the fort. A desultory decurion with swollen, marsh fever eyes came out and stamped our manifest. We set off.
It was so cold they had issued us rough felt cloaks with pointed hoods; we even had mittens so our numb hands could keep hold of the reins. On the uplands the wind swooped at us from a low, sodden sky, tearing our clothes, and so bitter we screwed our eyes into slits and bared our teeth, squealing with misery. The dark line of carts crept along that lonely road, at one point plunging into a dip where the mules skidded through slush and we had to dismount to lead them, heaving back up a sheer slope into the wild scream of the wind. Then we wound across more grey landscape where the low round burial mounds of forgotten native kings loomed and were lost again in a fine, teasing mist.
When we halted to have the manifest forged we were all so badly chilled that for once overseers and slaves seemed one in their agony. The corrupt clerk had trouble: too dark indoors, too windy when he tried coming to the door of his shack. We stood about for what seemed ages, hunched up in the lee of the carts, wretchedly crouching in the slightest shelter from that wind. It had taken twice as long as normal to come this far, and the sky was developing a dismal yellow-grey that boded snow.
At last we were ready for the road again. Two miles to the turn-off at the frontier. The waggon master gave me a wink. The line lurched forward. Starting off with such a weight was always a struggle for the mules, and today with the road in such a bad state they resented it more than usual. Mine skidded in their iron shoes on the slush that was turning to ice almost as we looked. They plunged wildly; one of the cart's axles stuck iced up. The jammed rear wheels slithered sideways, the axle cracked, a wheel gave way, a corner of the cart suddenly dipped, the mules screamed and reared, I stood up then next moment I pitched into the road, my load jiggered down a ditch, the wrecked cart sagged to one side, one mule had hurt itself so badly we had to cut its throat, and the other had broken its traces and galloped away.
For some reason, everyone else blamed me.
There was a long debate about my disrupted load.
Taking it to Abona meant amending the manifest again, apart from the problem of having to haul the extra ingots five to a cart. Besides, mine were four special bars: stolen pigs to be sold to strangers, stolen pigs that still contained their silver. Not for Abona! The other cart designated to go south could never carry eight. After much irrelevant argument of the type you get from men who are unused to solving problems at all, let alone standing outside on a dark day in the bitter cold, it was decided to leave my load here and smuggle it back to Vebiodunum on the return trip.
I volunteered to stay with the load.
After the rest left it grew horribly quiet. The few native huts were used by herdsmen in summer, deserted now. I had shelter, but as the weather hardened I realized that if it snowed badly my companions might be held up. I could be trapped here without food for a long while. Over the uplands came a veil of rain, so fine it neither settled nor fell, but clung to my face and clothes when I peered outside. For the first time in three months I found myself completely alone.
"Hello, Marcus!" I said, as if I was greeting a friend.
I stood and thought. This would have been the moment to escape, but the only reason I had been left there alone was that in the depths of winter the uplands were too isolated. Anyone who tried to run off would be found dead with the frozen cattle and drowned sheep in the spring. I might make it to the Gorges, but there was nothing there for me.
I still wanted to know how the ingots were shipped.
The rain stopped. It grew colder. I decided to act. Bent double, I clutched the ingots one at a time and staggered as far as I could across the ditch and away from the road. I then scraped a hiding place in the sodden ground. That was when I noticed only one of the bars carried the four stamps we used to denote that its silver still remained. Triferus was cheating the conspirators: they were trying to bribe the Praetorians with pipe lead! I sat back on my heels. If we told the Praetorians that, the conspirators would find themselves in trouble and Vespasian would be safe.
I buried all four bars. I marked the spot with a cairn of stones. Then I set out to walk back to the mines.
It was eight miles. Plenty of time to convince myself I was a fool. To keep my feet marching I had a long talk with Festus, my brother. Not that it helped; Festus thought I was a fool too.
Talking to a dead hero sounds strange, yet Festus was the type of magic character whose conversation made you feel light-headed even when he was alive. Out here, under a bloated sky, a frozen dot trudging over a dark plateau back into painful slavery of my own free will, talking to Festus smacked of greater reality than my own wild world.
Half a day later, on the final stretch, I plunged off the road taking a short cut across a bend. Roman roads go straight unless there is a reason. There was a reason for the great curve here: avoiding the gullies and pits of a worked out mine. As I stumbled through chest-high spears of dead bracken, the ground disappeared. My feet slipped on the fine frosted turf, I shot forwards on my back, crashing down into one of the pits. One heel caught awkwardly as I slid. Nothing hurt at first. When I started to climb out, lancing pain told me at once; I had broken a bone in my leg. Festus told me that it could only happen to me.
I lay on my back staring at the frozen sky and told my heroic brother a few home truths.
It began to snow. Dense silence settled. If I lay here, I would die. If I died here I might have atoned for what happened to Sosia, but apart from the report I had smuggled out to Hilaris if Rufrius Vitalis ever found him and managed to make it intelligible -I had achieved nothing else. To die without telling my story would make nonsense of all I had endured.
Snow, cruelly tranquil, continued to fall. I had walked myself warm, but I could feel the heat leaving my body even as I lay. I spoke; no one answered me now.
Better to make the effort, even if the effort fails. I contrived a splint, as well as I could. I found an old stake, and tied it on with the goat hair string I had been using as a belt. It was a poor job, but kept me upright, just.
I began to lurch on. Back to Veb. I would be useless at Veb, but I had nowhere else to go.
Someone a woman I knew asked me once, afterwards, why I did not claim sanctuary with the soldiers at the fortress.
There were two reasons three. One: I still hoped to find out where the stolen pigs were sent. Two: a crazy, skeletal slave coming off the moor and whining that he was the finance secretary's personal representative on business affecting the Emperor could only expect a thrashing. Three: not all informers are perfect. I never thought of it.
I was numb. Exhausted. Windblown inside and out. My brain was wrenched about with disappointment and pain. I homed in on the mines. Limping into the current diggings, I stumbled before the foreman Cornix. When I told him I had left four stolen ingots unattended he let out a roar and seized one of the pit props we sometimes used to support an overhang. I opened my mouth to say I had buried the pigs safely. Then, before I could speak, through the snow gluing my eyelashes I dimly saw Cornix swinging the post towards me. It caught me in the midriff, cracking several ribs. My leg gave way, the splint collapsed, and I fainted as I fell.
When they flung me in a cell I came round just enough to hear Cornix exclaim, "Ect him rot!"
"What if the bounty hunter calls?"
"Nobody wants this sniveller back." Cornix let out his rasping laugh. "If anyone asks, say he's dead he will be soon!"
That was when I really knew, I was never going home.
XXVIII
My hearing seemed unusually sharp. Understandable. Only noises from outside were keeping me sane; only my dregs of sanity kept me alive.
I could not move. No one came to speak to me. I could see nothing except the different shades of greyness that distinguished day from night on the pitted stones of my cell's
damp walls. There were no windows. Some days the door cracked open for them to push in a thick-lipped bowl of greasy food. I marginally preferred the days when they forgot.
I did not know how long I had been here. Probably not even a week. A week to a man who has been left for dead feels a long time.
From the shuffling of their footsteps as the chained slaves were marched about, I had learned to distinguish whether it was raining or merely drifting with the eternal winter mist. Rumbling waggons were the common traffic, though sometimes I caught the jaunty clip of a pony's hooves and knew an officer from the fort had ridden past in his scarlet cloak. With the wind right, I could make out the distant chipping of axes and the thonk of wooden hods at the seams. The smelting furnace was a perpetual roar, varied only by the fervent wheeze of bellows on the cupellation hearths.
Sometimes now I remember what happened next, and smile.
One day a pony, drawing some sort of dainty cart amid a tangle of businesslike riders, passed the works then pulled up smartly nearby. A military voice named the procurator Flavius. Someone grumbled. Then another voice sharp as the scream of an adze on wood:… the one you call Chirpy."
Now I was in a bad way. Delirium, if not death itself, was snuggling up to me: it sounded like the senator's daughter. At first I could not even remember her name. Then I dragged it back to mind from another world: Helena.
"Now which was that… Dead, I believe"
"Then I'll have to inspect the body! If he's buried, dig him up."
Oh lady, let my servants fetch the silver wine set out for you!
The door creaked ajar on its one hinge in the unexpected dazzle of a flare.
"Oh yes! That's him our precious runaway!"
I was almost too hoarse to swear at her, but I managed it.
Cornix the foreman stood just behind her shoulder, pitifully subdued.
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