Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS)

by John James

  The effect of this was not altogether what you might imagine. There wasn’t really anything for either men or women to do a great deal of the time. Nothing for the women, except to run small houses with cheap slaves. Very little for officers in third-rate regiments on garrison duty. A few, like Aristarchos, would go out to find something to do, and they didn’t stay long, even if they lived. But even that kind of garrison life entails a fair amount of detached duty at isolated posts and all kinds of chances to get out into the country. This didn’t mean that the ladies were more accessible. It only meant that the ladies made all the running.

  There were a fair variety of doctors in Vindabonum. There were half a dozen Greeks, a couple of Jews, and a whole crowd of Germans, who might be anything from properly trained priests to witches hung with charms. Any of them was perfectly capable of looking after broken arms or sprains or the occasional stab wounds. After every tavern brawl, one of the Greeks, who had been in Egypt and was a specialist, a real specialist recognised by the military, would have a spate of business relieving skull fractures. Most of these were due to Rudi’s chucker-out, a man called Donar. He was something of a mystery. He sounded like a northerner, and had been working as a smith, but had thrown this up on a sudden in the autumn to work for Rudi. He was not tall, but burly, very muscular, and he had a fine crop of red hair and beard.

  So for routine medicine the town was well provided. But when my father arrived, and they realised that he wasn’t going to practise, in spite of all his prestige, the local doctors adopted him as a kind of elder statesman of medicine. The way they showed this was quite simple. When they got anything that was quite incurable like visitations of boils or sores, they would pass it on to him as a superior operator. Once Milo, the trepanning specialist, even sent around a skull fracture he wasn’t keen on, just alive, with the brains oozing out. Of course the man died. Luckily the family chose to believe it wasn’t my father who killed him, but the bouncing around in the ox wagon from door to door. So they sued Milo, and Polycleites was drunk again that day and lost the case for him. Nobody ever tried to sue Rudi, or Donar.

  A lot of other odd cases arrived. There were facial tics and cases of paralysis and just plain madness. Most of them came from citizens, not from Germans. Those were probably afraid that they’d have to pay. Once my father found he was practising again, he began to charge on a swingeing scale.

  ‘Patients don’t trust you if they don’t pay,’ he would tell me. ‘If they want to get well, they have to do something about it themselves. The only thing they can do is pay. So I make them pay.’

  He would never have me around when he was dealing with these cases, but there was one winter evening when he began to explain his methods.

  ‘There’s not much you can do to tics, and so on. I just ask them how it got started. They become so interested in telling me about it that they forget to tic. First of all they have short spells of not twitching. Next they get to the stage when they don’t twitch at all in the surgery. Then they get so excited they stop twitching an hour before they get here, in sheer anticipation, and they forget to start twitching again till a couple of hours after they leave.

  ‘There are other things, too. Do you know how these ailments start? Take Julia Scapella, for instance. How much older do you think old Scapellus is than she? Twenty years? There he is, senior centurion of the Legion. Not only that, it makes him chief of staff for six thousand infantry, four cavalry regiments, and heaven knows how many minor posts and storehouses. Think of the pickings.

  ‘Well, now he’s static, he begins to think he ought to have a wife to suit his dignity, none of these early marriages with fishwives for him, and off he sends to a broker in Rome, probably the one he got his name through. Up the girl comes, never seen him before, doesn’t know a thing, and it comes as a bit of a shock. Then she begins to get boils on her … well, she gets boils. So he begins that round of staff visits, and they get longer and longer, and she begins to appreciate the good things of life she’s missing. And now she’s looking for treatment. The treatment is obvious. But not to her.’

  It was to me, though, and it didn’t take long to begin it, not with that bit of inside knowledge, and what I could easily pick up about Scapellus’s roster of visits. Not long, either, before Julia was paying a good fee for the complete cure of her boils, and I am pleased to say that my father made no attempt to avoid splitting it two ways. But this was what started all the trouble, in the spring.

  4

  It was one of the nights Otho came to dinner. He often came to dinner, or we went to him, as he had rented us the house next door to his, close to the west gate. This was a quiet affair, not like the big parties my father often used to give in those days for the other doctors, and people of better standing. There were just the three of us, and we were discussing the general state of trade.

  ‘So what are we in business here for?’ Otho asked. He knew more about the situation than anyone else on the river, which was why we employed him.

  ‘We trade in timber and hides, and wax. Some slaves, ragged savages, some furs, ragged pelts from moth-eaten bears (I will tell you some day how the mother moth finds her way back to her nest in the moving bear). Marcomen bring them down to the ferry, ragged Marcomen. We pay them in pots, wine, silver. Good round silver, beautiful shining silver. We pay them in coins, silver coins. They don’t want coin because they want to spend it, it’s just that when silver comes in coin they know how pure it is. If those oafs in Rome knew how much trouble they cause each time they debase it. They know all about that, out in Germany. ‘We want old denarii,’ they tell me. ‘Two-horse denarii, one of those or two of the new kind.’ They want wine … wine … wine …’ I filled his cup.

  ‘They want wine, red wine. They want pottery, red Samian pottery, the lovely red shine of the glaze. And glass, too, glass from Campania, glass they want more than gold. Gold? What do they want with gold? A little piece of gold pays for a lot of hides, and there it is, a little piece. But for the same hides you can have enough silver to make into the mount for a drinking horn or a morse to fasten your cloak with. And if the silver you start off with is coin, two-horse denarii that you melt down, then you know you’ve got good silver.’

  ‘Silver as a raw material for an industry,’ mused my father.

  ‘But there is something that comes down, but not often, and for that I always give silver. It glows … it shines …’

  ‘Amber,’ I breathed. ‘Perhaps once a month, perhaps less often you see that. High profit, perhaps, but not what you’d call an important article of trade.’

  ‘Not now, not now.’ I gave Otho more wine, it was worth staying in for, to hear this kind of thing.

  ‘Sixty, seventy years ago, this was a great place for the Amber trade. Those days, the Romans came up from Aquileia, up the Marc River, to trade for Amber with the Marcomen. There were real Marcomen there, then, my fathers. The Amber came down, Amber by the wagon load, think of it, by the wagon load, red glowing Amber. They paid for the Amber, and then they paid our wagoners to take it down to Aquileia, and then we sold them the oxen out of the wagons, all thin and tired from the journey, as fat stock. Ah, those were the fine days …’

  ‘How did they end?’ I asked.

  ‘Herman came. First he beat the Romans up in the north, three legions he cut up and not one word heard of them again. We had our Good King then, my grandfather Maroboduus. Herman defeated him, drove him out. All our fine warriors dead, our women raped, our children sold, all our nobles driven out, scattered, dead, dead. The Good King, he died in Ravenna. They made us all citizens because we hated Herman and so did the Romans, but the Marcomen are ruled now by renegades, people of low birth. And Herman and his Thuringians joined with the Cat King, and they hold all the centre of the great plain, and all the Amber they make goes through their hands and through the Thuringians, and to the Rhine. And it is paying the two sets of duty on it, to the Cat King and to the Thuringians, that makes Amber so expensive. B
ut if we could open the road east of the Cat men, and bring Amber down without paying the dues, if someone could go to the Kings of the Amber Road in the north, why then, think of the profits …’

  We thought. It was enticing.

  ‘Could you get anyone to go?’ my father asked.

  ‘I’ve got someone,’ said Otho. ‘Two men. They know the way to the north and I can trust them. They will take a little silver, but mostly they will go to meet people and find out the way. Occa will go.’

  I knew Occa. He was a sergeant-major in Aristarchos’s regiment. I had heard he was due for a long leave.

  ‘And the other?’

  ‘Donar.’

  A chucker-out? I stopped thinking about the scheme, there was nothing in it, nothing at all.

  We gave Otho more wine, and left him crying into his cups that he couldn’t find anyone of spirit willing to go, no one of intelligence or learning. He kept looking at me, and I kept ignoring him. There was nothing in the plan at all. Only wind.

  5

  Two days later it was the first fine day of spring. I had nothing to do, exiles usually haven’t. I had watched old Scapellus ride out on a long tour down river, all the posts to Carnuntum. That would keep him out of the way for a few nights, and I had already arranged how to occupy them. Then I had a work-out at the cavalry gymnasium. I had been having a few lessons with the cavalry sword, the long springy one. There’s quite a different technique with it. As I came out of the barracks I saw two off-duty legionaries. I wouldn’t have noticed them if they hadn’t been so obviously taking notice of me.

  I went off to Rudi’s tavern; I was peckish after the exercise, and as it was so sunny I sat on a bench outside sheltered from the wind, and ordered beer and hot sausages. It was a bit early and while the girl was getting the sausages heated up I ate a couple of salt herrings out of the barrel; they came down from the north too. After a while I looked across the street, and the two legionaries were there, not doing anything but standing against the wall of the house opposite and looking at me. Just looking. They were the same two. Their look made me feel a bit uncomfortable. After a bit, I called the girl and had her move me indoors by the fire. At least it didn’t look as if they had chased me away.

  It was more cheerful inside. I gossiped with Rudi’s number one wife. He made the best of both worlds; he told Romans that polygamy was a German custom, and to the Germans he said that was how the Romans lived at home in the south. Then she chivvied the number three wife, who had just brought me the hot sausages, to go and look after two new customers. I looked over, and they were the same two legionaries asking for beer. They bought half a pint each, the cheapest kind, and one of them made an entry on his tablets as if he was keeping account of his expenses. Then they sat nursing their pots and looking at me.

  I looked back. They weren’t very formidable in themselves, rather mild in fact. I knew them both by sight. That one looked after living-out permits for legionaries with native wives in the German quarter. The other was with the quartermaster, dealing with arrowheads and other warlike expendable stores. Not the kind of men to beat anybody up, but conscientious, pedantic, reliable, just the kind to use for following. Literate, too, could write a report afterwards.

  In this position, how do you get rid of your follower? Easy, I thought, I’ve never known the soldier yet who’ll pass up a free meal. When I finished my sausage, I called over the number three wife.

  ‘Those two gentlemen over there by the door, nearly through their beer. Get them a good big dish of hot sausages, bread, onions. Any radishes? Good, those too. And a quart apiece of best beer, the strong black stuff. Don’t mention my name, and keep the change.’

  I suppose she thought I was mad, but that didn’t matter. She was glad of the tip, since she was saving to buy Rudi another wife so that she’d no longer get all the kicks.

  As soon as she got the tray over to their table I got up and slipped out past her. There was enough on that tray to keep them busy for a quarter of an hour at least, even if they gobbled like pigs, and I was barely a furlong from Otho’s house, which had a side door into ours. But as I came to the gate, I looked behind me, and there they were on the street corner looking back at me.

  When I got into the house, I found Otho was not alone. Donar was there, and another man. If Donar was burly, this one was cubic, the same measurement tall and wide and deep. It was Occa. I don’t know what his cavalry regiment rode on; elephants, I should think. He had scars all up his arms; rumour says that he had once tackled a bear single handed, and it was the bear that ran away. Looking at him you could believe it. He was rubbing pig fat into his face. Donar was putting a last edge on a sword with a strop. Otho was weighing out silver pieces into bags, fourteen pounds in a bag.

  I stopped and looked at them.

  ‘Off this afternoon?’ I asked.

  ‘Tonight,’ said Occa.

  ‘Over the wall,’ said Donar.

  ‘Over the wall in the dark?’ I asked. It was fairly easy, if nobody spotted you; the town wall was one side of Otho’s courtyard. ‘Why not just walk out of the gates in the morning?’

  The three Germans looked at me in a pitying way, as if I had missed the point of something obvious.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Occa. ‘No story ever started by stealthily slipping through gates unguarded in day undiminished.’

  ‘Have you no piety?’ asked Donar. ‘No sense of achievement? A feat at the first gives the Gods greater glory.’

  The Germans speak like that when they want to be formal. I could talk their language fairly well by now, and I thought I might try my hand at ceremony one day. At that moment I was content with saying, ’Watch out for your necks on the other side.’ And I went up to my room. I had a couple of hours’ sleep, and then I began to dress for my visit to Julia. I was still thinking about Donar sneaking out of the town in the dark, probably leaving behind a handful of bad debts and a couple of sweethearts in the family way.

  I had some dinner in my room, and then I set out for Julia’s. I crossed our courtyard, and the gate keeper opened up for me. I stepped out into the dark street and stood for a moment with the open gate at my back. I looked about. In a sheltered alcove a little way along there were two men standing. They were not in the least concerned with keeping out of the moonlight, but only with keeping out of the wind. They were easy to recognise, even at that distance. As I looked at the two watchers, someone seized my arm from behind and pulled me back into the courtyard.

  ‘Have you no sense?’ asked Aristarchos. ‘Haven’t you seen them?’

  ‘Seen them?’ I tried to be reasonable. ‘They’ve been on my trail all day. I paid for their dinner, but they didn’t eat it.’

  ‘Two of my lads did. They told me about it. Do you know who they are?’

  ‘Yes. Two clerks from Headquarters Century.’

  ‘Scapellus’s century.’

  ‘So? Who’s afraid of that weedy pair? I didn’t even bring a sword out with me. I don’t think either of them has handled a weapon since they did recruit drill.’

  ‘No,’ said Aristarchos very slowly, as if he were speaking to a foreigner, or to a child. ‘No, not that kind of man. You don’t use that kind of man to kill. I don’t, anyway, and that’s my job, and it’s Scapellus’s job too, and he’s been at it a lot longer than I have. No, that kind of man you use for following and watching, because they do it so well. You use others for killing. I know I would, so Scapellus will.’

  ‘Do you think that illiterate squarehead can get the better of Greeks like us?’ Scapellus was half German, they said, and the best part of his education he’d got in the barrackroom. Aristarchos was sounding a bit scornful, so there was no harm in buttering him up a bit, even if he was only a Thracian with a thick accent.

  ‘I don’t know what they’re watching for, and anyway, Scapellus hasn’t any civil jurisdiction … has he …? I’ve got a week before he comes back, and I never knew a quartermaster who couldn’t be bribed.’


  ‘Let us look at this in detail,’ said Aristarchos smoothly, very much one Greek to another. ‘First of all, they’re watching for you to call on Julia. You’ve been seen before, you know. All Scapellus wants to do is catch you on the premises. Secondly, you haven’t got a week. Scapellus didn’t go to Carnuntum, he only went as far as the tenth milecastle on the river, and he’s coming back by dawn. I did the ration documents for the escort, so that’s how I know. And thirdly, it isn’t only that pair watching. When Scapellus comes back tomorrow, he’s going to find you trussed up and waiting for him.’

  ‘Now, now,’ I said, ‘that’s going a bit far. Julia wouldn’t let me down like that. Nor the house slaves either, they’re under the thumb.’

  ‘House slaves don’t come into it. They’re under lock and key. So is Julia, and she’s got that Syrian, Publiolus’s wife, to chaperone her. You didn’t know you’d been seen there too, did you? And then there’s Manlius’s wife, in our regiment, to chaperone them, and that’s how I know. So look, Photinus, don’t go up the street tonight, because a couple of those boys will hustle you in through that door whether you like it or not. And if you don’t go up the street tonight, walk carefully the next few days. If Scapellus comes home and finds the trap sprung and empty, he might come calling.’

  ‘So what do I do now?’

  ‘Sit tight and stay indoors for a bit. Now it’s clouding over, I’m going to run for it. If they let Scapellus think I tipped you off I’m for it.’

  He slid through the gate into the dark. I knew that when he had been farther down the river, he had had a reputation as a horse thief. Now he moved like it.

  I closed the gate and thought hard. If Julia was crying her heart out with the Syrian, there was no knowing what they were plotting between them. I might not have Scapellus round at once, but I’d probably have Publiolus at the door first thing in the morning. How long was I to stay indoors? A week? A month? Even if I did stay inside, there was nothing to stop Scapellus and his bullies from pushing the door in. And once husbands began to think over Julia’s troubles – nothing could hide Scapellus coming back five days early – there was no knowing who might be coming round.