Glory of Rome: (Gaius Valerius Verrens 8)

by Douglas Jackson

  Priscus’s fleshy features were crimson with fury. He looked wildly to where Dexter stood among the ordo, his face white as weathered bone.

  ‘In addition,’ Valerius continued relentlessly, ‘I fine the defendants fifty aurei for the spurious accusation of fraud against the claimant.’ He pulled a leather bag from the voluminous sleeve of his toga and placed it at his feet. ‘Fortuitously this sum has already been lodged with the court.’

  Tabitha was struggling to keep a straight face. Priscus looked as if he was ready to rush the dais, but Hilario took a threatening step forward and the farmer hesitated long enough for Shabolz and the lictors to surround the defendants and usher them away. Prince Claudius Tasciovanus’s lawyer whispered that his client begged leave to approach the dais.

  Valerius nodded and Tasciovanus stepped forward. ‘You have my thanks, lord.’

  ‘I only did what justice required. Once I established that the letter was genuine your case was not in doubt.’

  Tasciovanus looked back to where Priscus was being pushed out of the doorway. ‘Others might have been less certain,’ he glanced at the leather bag, ‘especially given the proper incentives. You have restored my faith, and that of my people, in Roman justice. If there is ever any service I can do yourself or the governor, please do not hesitate to ask.’

  Valerius thanked him for his courtesy, but he was pleased when he saw Tasciovanus leaving the court. If the Trinovante stayed he had a feeling his faith in Roman justice might be sorely tested.

  ‘Call the case of the State against Sextus Marcellus.’

  XXVIII

  A hater, Terentius Cantaber had said. One of the legion’s finest soldiers. A man to have at your side in any battle line, but one to respect rather than like, Marcellus subscribed to the view, popular among certain legionary circles, that any native who raised a hand against Rome should be regarded as vermin. ‘Fearless and pitiless,’ Cantaber said. ‘Working the land would mellow some men, but not Marcellus.’

  Like most of his militia comrades, Marcellus had retired from the Twentieth legion in the aftermath of the Boudiccan rebellion. He had been rewarded with a generous stipend and twenty-five iugera of prime farmland to the south of Colonia. Marcellus had never married, insisting he preferred ‘slaves to sons’, and he ran his farm with a harsh discipline that over the years had wrung healthy profits from the land. Yet when Marcellus rose each morning to break his fast and whip his workers into a frenzy of activity, two things combined to spoil his appetite.

  The first was the knowledge that his neighbour was a despised Celt, Emeran, who had survived the Boudiccan rebellion and Paulinus’s ‘reckoning’ by providing sanctuary for a Roman family who had fled from Colonia. This act of kindness had exempted him from the wrath that had consumed the property of most of his neighbours and consigned their lands to the likes of Marcellus. Emeran had a large family who hunted the forests and farmed the land in the desultory, and to Marcellus wasteful, Celtic fashion. Worse, Emeran’s lands included a small lake and a stream that ran tantalizingly close to the boundary of Marcellus’s farm, while Marcellus relied on brackish, barely drinkable water from a well he’d dug to supply his wattle and daub farmhouse, and his livestock were watered at a pitifully inadequate spring that had a habit of drying up at the height of summer. When the spring ran dry it was natural that Marcellus’s cows would be drawn to the stream and the Roman did nothing to stop them.

  This had happened on the morning Emeran died. According to Emeran’s son, he and his father had attempted to drive the animals back on to Marcellus’s land, but were quickly confronted by the legionary veteran, who was alone. Marcellus insisted, as he’d done on many similar occasions, that as a former Roman soldier he had a right to water his cattle in a stream on land he’d conquered. Emeran was a native, a barbarian, who should have been slaughtered with the rest after Boudicca’s last battle.

  Whatever happened next, Emeran ended up face down in his stream with his skull shattered and his brains splattered over a rock the size of a man’s head.

  Here the accounts diverged. Marcellus claimed Emeran had attacked him and he’d been forced to defend himself, a story confirmed by the overseer and two slaves who said they were with him. Emeran’s son said his father had lost patience with his neighbour’s harangue and turned away, at which point Marcellus picked up the rock, battered Emeran to the ground and kept hitting him till he was certainly dead. Such a disparity in the weight of the evidence, and the fact that Emeran and his son were mere Celts, would normally be enough to assure Marcellus’s acquittal. The matter was complicated by the fact that two nights before the incident, after a militia practice, three people in a bar testified they’d heard Marcellus saying he was going to kill Emeran.

  Marcellus rivalled Hilario for bulk and ferocity of expression, glaring at the prosecutor across the basilica floor as if daring him to make a direct accusation. The prosecutor, a local magistrate, was nervous to begin with under the malevolent gaze, and became more so as he questioned the three men from the bar. For some reason they seemed less certain now about the form of words or even what had been said. The victim’s son was more impressive, meeting Marcellus’s gaze without flinching and recounting the events as he remembered them in simple unvarnished fashion in a melodic sing-song Latin, only faltering when he listed his father’s injuries. Valerius had no doubt he was telling the truth. Not that it would make much difference.

  The boy was about seventeen and slightly built, with long dark hair. ‘I have a question for you,’ Valerius said. ‘Would you say your father was a big man?’

  The witness stared at him in confusion. ‘Big?’

  ‘In stature.’

  ‘No, lord,’ the boy said. ‘He was smaller than I am, though of a similar build.’ Valerius nodded. ‘And he had one leg shorter than the other.’ A searing glare at Marcellus. ‘He walked with a limp.’

  Emeran’s son resolutely maintained his story under cross-examination from Marcellus’s counsel, not even condescending to reply to the accusations of lying. Then it was Marcellus, who told his version of the story exactly as it was written in the statement he had given. ‘He flew at me,’ the former soldier rasped. ‘His hands were at my throat, but I managed to get a hand to the rock and hit him. I didn’t mean to kill him.’

  ‘His skull was smashed into fourteen pieces,’ Valerius pointed out.

  Marcellus frowned. ‘I must have hit him harder than I thought.’

  ‘Did he have a weapon?’

  The frown deepened. ‘A weapon?’

  ‘As I understand it you are much taller and heavier than the victim. It would take a very brave, or foolish, man to attack someone your size, a former soldier.’

  ‘He was a Celt,’ Marcellus said airily. ‘And therefore a fool, but they do not lack courage. He came at me like a wildcat.’

  ‘So no weapon?’

  Marcellus looked to his counsel for support, but found no help there. Valerius could see tiny beads of sweat appearing below his hairline. His mouth opened and closed. ‘Perhaps he had a knife?’

  ‘A big knife? A small knife?’

  ‘It must have been small,’ Marcellus shrugged, ‘or I would have mentioned it earlier.’

  The first witness was Marcellus’s overseer, a brute of a man in his master’s image. Like Marcellus he repeated his statement word for word in a slow, determined monotone. Valerius asked about a weapon. ‘Your master is a big man. Surely no one would be foolish enough to attack him with his bare hands?’

  Again the desperate look towards Marcellus’s counsel, who looked on with gritted teeth. Eventually the man shook his head. ‘I didn’t see a weapon.’

  Such was his terror that the first of Marcellus’s slaves had to be half carried into the court by Shabolz and another of the lictors, and he let out a cry when he saw Hilario’s axe. His fear was perfectly justified because, under Roman law, if Valerius doubted any part of his evidence he had the power to order the slave tortured to get to the
truth. In a shaking voice the man outlined a scenario that precisely mirrored the testimony of the overseer and his master. When the slave reached Emeran’s frenzied attack on Marcellus, the farmer’s counsel quickly interjected: ‘And did you see the knife?’

  The slave’s features froze in the startled look of a rabbit trapped by a stoat. The lawyer repeated his question with a deliberate emphasis on the word ‘knife’, and comprehension dawned on the man’s face. ‘Yes, lord. I saw the knife.’ He nodded so enthusiastically it was a wonder his head didn’t fall off. ‘Emeran attacked the master with a big knife.’

  By the time the second slave had completed his testimony the knife had become a small sword and there were murmurs from the crowd. No one doubted that Marcellus was guilty, but he was an old soldier, their comrade who had shared the battle line with them, bled and tasted blood at their sides. They didn’t want to see his head rolling in the dust in the forum.

  Marcellus’s florid features had paled as he watched his defence collapse. His eyes flickered to Hilario, who returned his stare with a look of savage concentration, as if he was already measuring the girth of his victim’s neck.

  Valerius addressed the accused and his counsel. ‘Sextus Marcellus, I find you guilty of the murder of Emeran the Celt.’ He allowed the words to hang in the air for a moment. ‘Your crime merits a sentence of death, but in view of your record of service to the State and a certain element of provocation on the part of the victim, I commute the sentence to an order of compensation for five thousand sestertii. In addition, you will provide the family of Emeran the Celt with the services of two field slaves, to be chosen by the court, to aid with the running of the estate.’ Marcellus hung his head, entirely defeated. Five thousand sestertii was half a year’s wages for a legionary; finding it would come close to ruining him. Valerius saw the murdered man’s son staring at him with something like hatred. Sometimes even the best justice had to be tempered with pragmatism, but it left a bitter taste in the mouth. ‘I also issue an order preventing you from setting foot on the Emerans’ land for two years on pain of death.’

  ‘So my clever husband can find a way to turn the corruptors’ gold against them.’ Tabitha didn’t hide her disapproval as Hilario and his fellow lictors escorted them back to the townhouse. ‘But a murderer goes free. We would have done things differently in Emesa.’

  ‘I’m sure you would,’ Valerius replied mildly. ‘And Marcellus certainly deserved to die. But Terentius Cantaber told me he was a follower of Mithras, and a high-ranking one at that. If I’d had him executed his comrades in the militia who worship the bull-slayer would have driven the boy and his family out, or more likely killed them all. Agricola sent me here to do his dirty work. If he’d been presented with the Marcellus case he would have dismissed the charges before it ever came to trial.’

  ‘What will happen now?’

  ‘If the boy has any sense he’ll use the money to hire a couple of handy veterans to protect the family. But the best thing he could do is let Marcellus stew for a few months then offer some sort of limited access to the stream.’

  ‘But wouldn’t the killer just see that as a sign of weakness?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Valerius allowed his gaze to drift across his surroundings. They were approaching an intersection on the narrow street, with apartment blocks towering over them to either side. ‘But by then we’ll be far away. I hope to finish up tomorrow and we’ll leave the following morning for Lindum. I—’

  Without warning a cloaked and hooded figure stumbled from an alleyway into the road, heading directly for Valerius. Shabolz effortlessly kicked the man’s legs from under him and he fell face down with Hilario looming over him, axe held high ready to strike at Valerius’s order. One of the Pannonians picked something up from the dust. ‘He was carrying this.’ He showed Valerius a small knife, insignificant in its way, but lethal enough if you knew what you were doing.

  ‘Get him to his feet.’ Only now Valerius recognized the ragged cloak as the one he’d seen in the basilica. ‘Pull back the hood and let’s see his face.’

  Shabolz dragged back the all-encompassing cowl.

  Even Hilario took a step back at the sight that greeted them. The face of a monster. A sword edge had taken him high on the left side of the forehead, splitting scalp and skull before it cut diagonally across his face. The force of the blow had destroyed the left eye socket and turned the eye into a festering, pus-filled sore. Relentlessly the blade had continued its course to carve through the bridge of the man’s nose, shattering bone and cartilage to leave a gaping cavity through which breath and snot whistled noisily. Finally, the blow had stripped the flesh from his right upper lip and removed half his teeth before breaking his lower jaw so it hung loose, giving his face a permanently lop-sided cast. An old wound, all puckered scar tissue and weeping fissures, but the horror of it transfixed even men inured to battle. The old man’s undamaged features were filthy and wrinkled and covered in thick grey stubble, and strands of greasy, matted hair drooped like rats’ tails from a weathered skull. Dried mud coated the flapping rags of a cloak so verminous a man could almost see the legions of lice marching up and down the threads.

  Valerius stared at the face and the single burning eye that transfixed him like a spear point.

  ‘Cearan?’

  ‘Valerius, do you know this man?’

  Valerius’s eyes never left the ruined face as he answered. ‘He saved my life, Tabitha.’

  ‘Oh, Valerius …’

  ‘And he took my hand.’

  XXIX

  Valerius had felt the ghosts of the past stirring from the moment he landed in Britannia. Now he began to doubt his sanity. Cearan? Cearan should have been dead years ago. He should have died with Maeve and Boudicca, and a hundred thousand Britons who had followed the Iceni queen, and a hundred thousand more who had paid the price for her barbarous lust for revenge. His wound should have killed him, or disease, or starvation. Yet he’d survived, and he was here, where it had all begun. Why?

  Hatred. His whirling mind found the answer in an instant. As he sought to recover his composure in the sheltered courtyard garden of the townhouse, he shuddered as he remembered the mix of loathing, disgust and downright madness in the depths of that single eye. And Cearan had reason to hate. Rome had robbed him of everything. His wife, his family, his lands, his rank and his honour.

  ‘You should send him away, Valerius,’ Tabitha insisted. ‘He tried to kill you.’ Shabolz and Hilario had taken an unprotesting Cearan to the bathhouse with orders to clean him up, find him fresh clothes and something to eat.

  ‘If he’d wanted me dead he wouldn’t have done it in the middle of the street with guards all around me. There was something else.’ Valerius tried to visualize the moment again. The hooded figure stumbling towards him in a shambling run, arms outstretched. Almost welcoming. Or more accurately seeking welcome. ‘I think he recognized me and it stirred some spark of memory in him. A memory of friendship or of better times, even if it was just for a moment. For seventeen years Cearan has lived the life of a starving beggar. An abomination to be sent away with a kick. Never experiencing a woman’s touch or another man’s affection. Driven mad by his loss and his suffering. And tormented beyond sanity every time he touches the ruin of his face. It is difficult to believe, but Cearan was probably the handsomest man I ever met. A woman might even have called him beautiful. I need to talk to him. Alone.’

  She reached up and touched his cheek. ‘You’re a good man, Valerius, but one day your goodness will be the death of you. At least keep Shabolz with you.’

  ‘Cearan won’t speak if he feels threatened.’

  ‘And what does it matter if he doesn’t speak?’ A hiss of exasperation escaped her lips. ‘What is it you want from him?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted.

  ‘Forgiveness? Is that it? You seek his pardon for some imagined slight? Or crimes committed in your name by the soldiers of Rome? From what I understand, if he mar
ched with Boudicca’s rebels he may have crimes of his own for which to atone. Have you thought of that? Ceris told me what happened here and in Londinium. As always in your men’s wars, it was the women and children who suffered most. Feed him and clothe him by all means, Valerius. Indulge your compassion. Give him a purse and a horse and the gods’ blessing. But send him away. I see no good coming from any further contact with this man.’

  Valerius reached out to hold her by the shoulders and kissed her on the forehead. None the less, Tabitha couldn’t rid herself of a terrible foreboding when he walked from the room.

  ‘Leave us,’ Valerius ordered.

  Shabolz went to the curtained doorway. Hilario hesitated, glancing at the man hunched over the kitchen table, a spoon moving between a wooden bowl and his lips with rhythmic determination. As much food – some kind of stew – sprayed from the shattered mouth as went down his gullet.

  ‘He won’t hurt me,’ Valerius assured them.

  Shabolz jerked his head towards the door. Hilario obeyed with a scowl and a glare at Cearan that promised terrible retribution if Valerius were wrong.

  When they were gone, Valerius took his seat on the opposite side of the table, taking care to stay out of range of the spatter of meat and gravy. The other man continued eating with the singleminded application of one uncertain when he’d see another meal. As he ate, Valerius studied him. A barber had cut his hair and shaved him and they’d provided him with a new tunic. Still, it was difficult to recognize this skeletal, broken creature as the great lord he had once been; the man Valerius had called friend. The only man who could have saved Britannia from Boudicca’s ravages and Paulinus’s reckoning.