Julius Crescens opened his eyes and winced at his aching head. As he watched the two men go he made an inner vow. When they reached Britannia, Gaius Valerius Verrens would never take up his post. He was a dead man.
XI
‘You said we’d be living in tents.’ Tabitha counted the line of wagons and confirmed she’d been right the first time. Twenty, including the luxurious sprung carriage that came with the title of legatus iuridicus. Wagons packed not only with the necessities she’d identified for the journey, but also a full-sized dining table and couches, enough food and wine to get them to Londinium and back three times, a cook from the Emperor’s own kitchens, and …
‘Titus insisted we have his pavilion.’ Valerius smiled. ‘I know it takes up two of the wagons on its own, but it has four or five individual rooms. We’ll be sleeping in our own bed. You’re the wife of a legate now.’ His voice took on a note of self-mockery. ‘A patrician. And that demands a certain style.’
‘And all that food?’
‘My orders are to act as Vespasian’s envoy to Germania. That’s why we’re travelling down the Rhenus.’ Normally Roman officials would sail to Narbo in southern Gaul and cross overland to Burdigala to take ship direct to Londinium, but Vespasian was still not completely certain of the morale and loyalty of the frontier garrisons. ‘We’ll be entertaining men of consular rank and the governors of the German provinces.’
Servants scurried back and forth between the villa and the wagons carrying the contents of Tabitha’s dressing room. They heard a high-pitched cry of delight and turned to see Lucius leading the new pony – a little white mare – Valerius had bought for him as a surprise. The boy approached with a broad smile, but as he reached his parents he forced his pink features into what he believed to be a mask of solemnity.
‘Mother, Father.’ Lucius bowed from the waist and Valerius suppressed a smile. ‘I thank you for my gift. I promise to look after her and I will ride her every day.’
‘You certainly will, boy.’ Valerius struggled to keep his voice stern. ‘You’ll oil and polish her harness and, when she’s in stables, you’ll muck them out every day.’
‘A horse needs a name,’ Tabitha suggested. ‘What will you call her?’
Lucius looked up into the mare’s face. Clearly he hadn’t considered naming her. She was a pretty animal, with a bright eye and a steady temperament. Valerius had chosen her for her quickness of foot and her stamina. ‘May I make a suggestion?’ he said.
Lucius nodded.
‘I once had a horse like her. Loyal and fast and she never let me down. I called her Khamsin after the swift winds that scour the Syrian desert. It would honour me if you would do the same.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ Lucius’s voice quivered with emotion.
‘Now saddle her up. We leave within the hour.’
‘Khamsin?’ Tabitha smiled. ‘I didn’t know you were such a romantic, Valerius.’
‘It was when I was with Corbulo in Antioch. She was a fine horse. A gift.’ He felt a twinge of guilt. The reply was disingenuous at best. Not a gift from the general, but from his daughter, Domitia Longina Corbulo.
‘Will he be safe, do you think? You know how impetuous he can be.’
‘He’s well taught and she is well schooled,’ Valerius assured her. ‘By the time we reach Britannia he’ll be as at home in the saddle as you or I.’
‘Even so …’
A hint of humour softened her words, but Valerius knew this was an argument she wouldn’t give up. ‘I’ll have Felix put a good man in charge of him and they’ll never be out of our sight.’
He found Felix making a last-minute check of his men’s equipment. For the cavalry troopers, tied to the pace of the slowest bullock cart, the first two weeks of the journey threatened to be interminably dull. To combat the boredom Valerius and Felix had worked out a series of exercises they could carry out on the march without tiring the horses overmuch. They would travel across the spine of Italia and north over the River Padus and the gods-cursed plain of Placentia. The journey through the Alps in the summer would be safe enough on a well-found road all the way to Augusta Raurica.
‘Who is your steadiest trooper, Felix?’ he asked. ‘I need your best man to look after my son.’
‘The Pannonians are the best horsemen, but they’re a rough-and-ready crowd.’ Felix ran a hand through his dark hair and frowned. ‘Didius Gallus, who came with me from the Twentieth. A genuine volunteer. Though the gods only know why because he was due a promotion if he’d stayed. He has manners. Knows his trade. And he’s a reader. Yes, lord, you could do a lot worse than young Didius.’
‘Which one is he?’
‘The tall sandy-haired trooper checking the girth on the bay.’
Valerius followed his gaze. It was the cavalryman who looked so familiar. Felix called him over. ‘Your officer speaks well of you,’ Valerius told him.
The shy grey eyes blinked at the unexpected praise. ‘Then I thank him for it, sir.’
‘I have a request for you. I cannot make it an order because it’s a personal matter.’
The young man straightened. ‘Anything, sir.’
Valerius grinned. ‘Don’t be too eager until you’ve heard what it is. I know from experience it may be no easy task. You see the boy with the white mare?’
‘Your son, sir?’
‘Yes. He’ll travel in the coach for some of the journey, but when the going is easier I want him to spend time in the saddle. He’s a good boy, but he can be apt to stray. I need someone reliable to watch over him, teach him some proper horsemanship and what it means to be a cavalryman.’
‘I’d be pleased to, sir.’
Valerius studied him. An honest open face, but no fool. He knew his tentmates would make fun of him for babysitting the legate’s son, but he was prepared to do it anyway. ‘Tell me, Didius, have we ever served together?’
‘No, sir.’ Didius grinned. ‘But you served with my grandfather.’
Valerius gave a snort of disbelief. ‘I’m not that old, boy.’
‘He was in the Colonia militia, sir. I’m named for him.’
It felt as if someone had dipped him in ice water. All that remained of the Colonia militia was a mound outside the city where the bleached bones of their anonymous owners lay buried in a mass grave. Seventeen years since Boudicca’s horde swept the retired veterans of the Twentieth legion aside in a haze of blood. Valerius had commanded the militia for a few short hours. Now their blurred faces ran through his head and he tried to put names to them. Falco, senior centurion. Corvinus, the armourer, who’d sacrificed his honour to save his wife and child. Octavian, with the flashing dark eyes and bushy beard. Then it came to him. ‘Didius, the moneylender?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I remember him.’ An image formed of the grizzled centurion taking an Iceni spear point in the throat. ‘A good soldier and a good man. He annulled all of his comrades’ debts the night before he died.’
‘He did, sir,’ Didius said wryly. ‘The family didn’t much appreciate that.’
‘You must have been what? Four or five years old? I’m surprised …’
‘That I’m here, sir?’ The cavalryman laughed. ‘My father used to tell the story every year on the anniversary of my grandfather’s death. How you ordered the civilians to be evacuated the previous night. Because he had a young family, my father received dispensation to escort them to safety.’
Valerius remembered the evacuation well enough, but he was even more surprised the boy and his family had survived. ‘I was told they’d been wiped out.’
‘The Celts ambushed us on the Londinium road.’ Didius’s face turned sombre. ‘Many died, but the auxiliary cavalry escort kept the rebels back long enough for my father to lead a party into the woods. He always said we owed our lives to your foresight.’
Valerius would argue differently. He’d made one mistake after the other, driven by foolish pride and a false sense of duty. A more sensible man would hav
e ignored his orders and got them all out alive long before Boudicca arrived. He managed a smile. ‘Well, I’m glad of it. And I can see my son will be in good hands.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Come, I’ll introduce him to his new bodyguard … and Didius?’
‘Sir?’
‘When you get round to telling him about the cavalry leave out the bit about troopers sometimes having to eat their horses. He can find that out for himself.’
They’d been on the road for three days before Valerius realized they were being followed. He spent his mornings in the sprung carriage with Tabitha, reading through the documents Titus had provided detailing the legal history of Roman rule in Britannia. In the afternoons he’d take to the saddle in mail and helmet, indistinguishable from his escort. Normally, he rode with Felix in the vanguard, but often he’d take the chance to drop back and talk to individual troopers. As long as they were in Italia he saw no need for scouts or outriders, but Felix felt it prudent to post a rearguard. Valerius was with them the second day when he noticed a single horseman keeping pace with the convoy. He’d thought little of it, expecting the rider to overtake them when they camped for the evening, but here he was again. Just an occasional glimpse from a height, or on a long, straight stretch of road, and always at the same distance. Valerius called Felix down from the front of the column.
‘What do you make of that?’
Felix stared back down the road at the black dot in the far distance. ‘Just another traveller?’ he suggested. A forced carelessness to his voice made Valerius persist.
‘You think so? He was in exactly the same place yesterday.’
The decurion shifted in the saddle. ‘I wasn’t certain how to tell you.’
Valerius shook his head. ‘Why don’t we wait for him among those trees?’
At the next bend, the two men and two of the rearguard slipped away into a nearby olive grove. One was Shabolz, the Pannonian, and the other the man with the permanent scowl, known to his comrades as Hilario. Valerius noticed Shabolz reach back to the pouch attached to his saddle to retrieve a fletched and weighted dart about a foot long.
Valerius turned to Felix. ‘We don’t want him dead, do we?’
‘Mars save us, no.’
‘I can part his hair at thirty paces,’ Shabolz assured them. ‘If he makes a run for it I’ll lame the horse.’
‘That won’t be necessary, trooper,’ Felix growled.
‘You seem to know a lot about our stalker?’ Valerius’s suggestion drew an angry grunt from Hilario.
‘You’ll see.’ Felix didn’t hide his misery.
‘He’s taking his time,’ Valerius mused. ‘That horse is barely moving. He’s probably asleep in the saddle.’
A few minutes later they heard the slow clop of the animal’s hooves. Soon the horse was visible through a gap in the trees, its rider cloaked and hooded despite the summer heat. Valerius waited until it was just past their position.
‘Now,’ he hissed.
They urged their mounts into the road and surrounded the rider. Valerius expected an instant surrender to superior force, but the horseman’s hand whipped to his belt. Before he could reach the weapon, Valerius reached across with his left hand and hauled the man from the saddle, puzzled by a lack of weight and bulk. The figure in the cloak was so light he could hold him in the air between the horses, legs kicking. A wriggling lurch and the hood fell back to reveal a boy, a remarkably beautiful boy with high cheekbones and long lashes, his thick dark hair cropped tight. Did one of his escort have pederasty to add to their many vices?
‘Leave me alone.’ With the shrill cry the boy fell clear of the cloak to land sprawling on the packed dirt of the road. He bounded up and would have fled, but Valerius dropped from the saddle and wrapped an arm around him. Iron-shod sandals kicked against Valerius’s legs, but the legate ignored the pain. He had made a surprising discovery. The boy was not a boy at all, but a rather well-endowed girl.
‘I told you we should have cut her throat,’ Hilario growled.
‘I should have mentioned it earlier, lord.’
‘She’s yours?’ Valerius asked. Hilario and Shabolz flanked the girl, her hands tied to her saddle till Valerius decided what to do with her.
‘Oh no, lord. If she belongs to anyone, she belongs to Florus. She’s from some wild tribe that lives in the marshes east of Lindum. Around sixteen, as far as we can gather, with a name no one can pronounce, but she shortens to Ceris. She followed him on foot all the way to Londinium, then stowed away on the ship to Gesoriacum. One of the crew discovered her and the captain would have thrown her overboard had Florus not pleaded for her life. He relented, but I insisted she leave us when we reached shore.’
‘Yet here she is riding one of your remounts, decurion.’
‘Yes, lord.’ Felix hung his head. ‘Florus claimed she had great powers in the healing arts. One reason the captain spared her was because she mixed up a poultice that reduced a great swelling on his jaw.’ He glanced at Valerius. ‘She also mixed a potion that cured my ship sickness.’
‘So you kept her.’
‘It’s good for morale for a squadron to have a medicus.’ Valerius hid a smile as Felix’s voice took on a veteran’s tone. ‘The men know they can rely on being dosed if they get the shits or camp fever and that someone will stitch them up if they’re wounded. She sewed up Florus’s arm after an unfortunate knife fight, and you can barely see the scar.’
‘I’m willing to bet she caused it.’
‘True, lord, but that was more than a month ago. The lads are used to her now. They’re not all bad. She helps Pudens with the rations. In a few days you’ll barely notice she’s around.’
‘You think I’ll keep her?’
Felix kept his eyes on the road and his face straight, but Valerius could hear the smile in his voice. ‘You’ve commanded soldiers, lord. I don’t believe you’d ever rob them of their talisman and that’s what she’s become. You can send her home when we get back to Britannia and you break up the unit.’
‘Why would I break up the escort?’
‘We haven’t exactly covered ourselves in glory, lord.’
‘No, you haven’t,’ Valerius agreed. ‘But who knows when you might get the chance.’
XII
Augusta Raurica sat on a plateau just south of the Rhenus, bounded by the valleys of two lesser streams which formed a triangle whose tip closed at the great river. The city’s origins lay in the fort on the bank of the Rhenus, but unlike many such communities Augusta Raurica hadn’t developed in haphazard fashion around the military centre. Its founders had planned it on firm architectural lines, with wide intersecting streets and the Temple of Jupiter dominating from the highest point. A thriving city, situated at the crossroads of two important trade routes. Stout defensive walls at the top of steep slopes protected the riches of those who occupied it.
Valerius had intended to stay only a single night before sailing for Moguntiacum, but he discovered his hopes were in vain. In all honour he couldn’t refuse an invitation to dine with the leading members of the ordo, the council of a hundred leading citizens. In any case, no ships of the Rhenus fleet were in dock, so they’d have to wait for the next convoy of merchant vessels.
During the banquet, the city’s duoviri took their opportunity to lobby a man with direct access to the Emperor. It was all very well defeating the Batavians, but they would never feel safe until Vespasian dealt with the tribes east of the Rhenus. Valerius promised to pass on their concerns before making his excuses at the earliest opportunity to leave with Tabitha. They walked back to the camp by the light of two flickering torches, escorted by six of Felix’s troopers. ‘So the price of your legate’s sash is to be trapped between two of the biggest bores in Germania Superior.’ Tabitha laughed. ‘I hope it was worth it.’
‘Oh, it wasn’t too bad.’ Valerius took his wife’s hand. ‘They agreed to give us the use of three merchant ships that will arrive tomorrow. What t
hey told me may come in useful when we visit Moguntiacum and Colonia. I suspect they have a point about the eastern tribes, but the real reason they want the Eleventh moved here from Vindonissa is the amount of profit they can squeeze from five thousand soldiers instead of five hundred.’
She laid her head on his shoulder, unconscious of the men surrounding them, and Valerius thanked the gods this was his woman. He loved her in so many complicated ways and she made his heart thunder the moment she stepped into a room. For all their new riches he knew it didn’t matter to Tabitha whether they lived in a villa or a one-room apartment high in a Suburan insula. All that mattered was that they were together.
‘And how did you fare with the ladies of Augusta Raurica?’
Tabitha laughed. ‘Naturally they had their instructions to impress upon the legate’s lady the virtues of their husbands, but it was simple enough to turn them away from politics. They plagued me about the latest fashions in Rome, their troubles with their servants, and their babies.’
‘Babies.’ Valerius smiled. ‘I wouldn’t have thought old Justus and Tiberius had it in them.’
‘I doubt they do.’
The way she said it, softly, but with a certain unmistakable conviction, made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. He stopped dead in the street. ‘You’re …’
‘The girl Ceris noticed a week ago, but I wanted to be certain before I told you.’
‘But this means …’ He struggled for breath. ‘You can’t continue. All this travelling can’t be good for the baby.’
‘You would abandon me here?’ She pulled him by the arm towards the city gates, laughing at his fears.
‘Then you should go back to Fidenae. Olivia will look after you.’
She turned to face him, a hawkish glint in her eye. ‘If you think either I or your child will let you travel to Britannia without us, Gaius Valerius Verrens, you may think again. It will be another six months at least and Ceris can look after me on the journey.’
Valerius sensed the men around them trying to keep their faces straight. What more could he say that wouldn’t be wasted breath? She had the coach. The pavilion was as comfortable as any mansio. And she was right: Ceris had proved as skilled and useful as Felix suggested. She would be as safe among her friends and servants as at Fidenae, perhaps more so.
Glory of Rome: (Gaius Valerius Verrens 8) Page 9