The Iron Hand of Mars mdf-4

by Lindsey Davis

  'Come in, dear. What can I do for you?' The question could have been simple politeness… or a commercial bid.

  I played everything straight. 'My name is Marcus Didius Falco; I am a government agent. I should be grateful if you would answer a few questions.'

  'Certainly.' Of course, it didn't guarantee she would answer them truthfully.

  'Thank you. I hope you don't mind if I start with you? You are Claudia Sacrata, and you keep a welcoming house. Do you live with your mother?' We both understood this euphemistic phrase.

  'My sister,' she corrected. It was the same flimsy veil of respectability, though I noticed no chaperone ever appeared at our interview.

  I plunged straight in: 'I believe you once shared the confidence of His Excellency Cerialis?'

  'That's right, dear! She was the type who liked to catch people out by admitting the unthinkable. Her shrewd eyes watched me while she tried to deduce what I wanted.

  'I need to acquire some sensitive information, and it's difficult finding people I can trust.'

  Did my general send you?'

  'No. This is nothing to do with him.'

  The atmosphere changed. She knew I was investigating someone; if it had been His Excellency, she had intended to slap me down. Now she saw her most notable client was in the clear; her tone became proprietary. 'I don't mind talking about Cerialis.' She gestured me to a couch. 'Make yourself more at home…' Home was never like this.

  She rang a bell for a servant, a nippy lad who seemed to have answered quite a few bells in his time. After surveying me coyly, she gushed, 'A hot-spiced-wine man, I should say!' Outside my own home I hate the stuff. To encourage good relations, I agreed to be a man who drank hot spiced wine.

  It was a rich liquor, served in magnificent cups, with the spices rather overdone. A consoling warmth flooded my stomach, then seeped into my nervous system making me feel happy and safe; even when Claudia Sacrata cooed 'Tell me all about it!', which was supposed to be my line.

  'No, you tell me,' I smiled, implying that women who knew what they were doing had tried to undermine me before. 'We were discussing Petilius Cerialis.'

  'A very pleasant gentleman.'

  'Bit of a reputation as a hothead?'

  'In what way?' she simpered.

  'The military way, for instance.'

  'Why do you think that?

  This was a silly dance. However, I deduced that if I wanted information, talking about her precious Cerialis was the price I had to pay. 'I've been reading about his battle at Augusta Treverorum, for one thing.' I was sipping my hefty winecup as demurely as I could. If Cerialis wore his epaulettes in the usual style, he had bored everybody silly with the story of his big fight.

  Claudia Sacrata posed and considered. 'People did say at the time that he made mistakes.'

  'Well, you can look at it two ways,' I conceded, playing the friendly type. There was, in fact, only one way I could look at it. Petilius Cerialis had stupidly allowed his opponents to concentrate in large numbers while he had been awaiting reinforcements. That had been dangerous enough. His famous engagement was a shambles, too. Cerialis had built his camp on the opposite bank of the river from the town. The enemy arrived very early in the morning, crept up from several directions, and burst into the camp, throwing all into confusion.

  'I understood,' Claudia defended him with solid loyalty, 'that it was only the general's brave action that saved the situation.' So that was his story.

  'Undoubtedly.' My work demands a shameless ability to lie. 'Cerialis rushed from his bed without body armour, to discover that his camp was in turmoil, his cavalry were fleeing, and the bridgehead had been taken. He grabbed the fugitives, turned them round, retook the bridge with great personal courage, then forced his way into the Roman camp and rallied his men. He salvaged everything and finished the day by destroying the enemy's headquarters instead of losing his own.'

  Claudia Sacrata wagged her finger. 'So why are you sceptical?'

  Because the other assessment was that our troops had been led pathetically; the enemy should never have been able to get so close undetected, the camp had been inadequately guarded, the sentries were asleep, and their commander had absented himself. Only the fact that the tribesmen had been intent on grabbing plunder had averted complete disaster from our dashing general.

  I restrained my bitterness. 'Why was the general not sleeping in the camp that night?'

  The lady responded calmly. 'That I can't say.'

  'Did you know him at that point?'

  'I met him later.' So even before their intrigue started, he had preferred the comforts of a private house.

  'May I ask how your friendship came about?'

  'Oh, he visited Colonia Agrippinensium.'

  'Romantic story?' I grinned.

  'Real life, dear.' I guessed she regarded selling sexual activity as no different from selling eggs.

  'Tell me?'

  'Why not? The general came to thank me for my part in undermining the enemy.'

  'What had you done?' I imagined some brothel intrigue.

  'Our city was looking for a way to re-establish its ties with Rome. The town councillors offered to hand over the wife and sister of Civilis, plus the daughter of one of the other chiefs, who had been kept here as securities. Then we tried something more useful. Civilis, still confident, was placing his hopes in his best forces, warriors from among the Chauci and Frisii, encamped not far from here. The men of our town invited them to a feast and plied them with lavish food and drink. Once they were all completely stupefied, they locked the doors and set fire to the hall.'

  I tried not to display too much shock. 'A friendly Germanic custom?'

  'It's not unknown.' The most chilling part was her matter- of-fact tone.

  'So when Civilis learned that his crack troops had been burned alive, he fled north, and Petilius Cerialis rode grate fully into Colonia. But what was your part, Claudia?'

  'I provided the food and drink for the feast.'

  I put down my winecup.

  'Claudia Sacrata, far be it from me to pry, but can you tell me something – ' This oddly comfortable yet insensitive woman was upsetting me. I studiously changed the subject. 'What's the true story about losing the general's flagship?'

  She smiled and said nothing.

  It had been another stupid incident. I told her what I already knew from my research. After an unsuccessful period of campaigning in northern Europe, where Civilis and the Batavians had engaged him in guerilla warfare around the marshes of their homeland and had seemed set to fend off Rome indefinitely,. Petilius Cerialis had taken a breather (his favourite kind of action) and gone to inspect some new winter quarters at Novaesium and Bonna, intending to return north with a much-needed naval flotilla. Yet again discipline was poor; yet again his pickets were careless. One dark night, the Germans crept in, slashed the guy ropes, and wreaked havoc while our men were fumbling under their collapsed tents and running about the camp half dressed and terrified. They had no one to rally them, because, of course, yet again Cerialis had slipped off elsewhere.

  'Then the enemy towed off the flagship, Julius Civilis believing the general to be aboard.'

  'His mistake!' Claudia agreed purringly.

  'Sleeping out of camp again?' I tried not to sound critical. 'Evidently.'

  'With you, as people said?' I was having great trouble imagining this.

  'You really can't expect me to answer that.'

  'I see.' With her.

  'You said your enquiries had nothing to do with Petilius, so why all these questions about past events?' I was pushing matters further than she liked now.

  'I'm a sucker for lively background.' I was hoping my interest in Petilius might appear to threaten hint, so that she would try to deflect me with the information I really wanted. But she was tougher than she seemed. Any impression of foolishness hid a shrewd business sense. 'What happened to the flagship in the end?'

  'At daybreak the rebels all sailed away
in the Roman ships. They towed the flagship into their own territory as a present for their priestess.'

  'Veleda!' I let out a low whistle. 'So if Cerialis was with you that night, you saved his life.'

  'Yes,' she agreed proudly.

  'If he had been aboard -' As he should have been. – his fate would have been gruesome. The last Roman officer the rebels sent to Veleda has never been heard of since.'

  'Terrible!' she agreed, with conventional sympathy.

  'That's my mission,' I told her. 'He was a legionary legate.

  I have to find out for the Emperor and his family what unkind fate befell him. I doubt you would ever have met this one; he was stationed at Vetera, a long distance from here – '

  "Munius Lupercus?' She sounded surprised. 'Oh you're wrong there, dear,' declared the imperturbable Claudia. 'I knew Munius very well.'

  I sighed inwardly, I tried to shift position on the cushions beneath me, but they gripped me with embarrassing suction. When Claudia Sacrata told a man to make himself comfortable, she didn't intend him to prise himself free without the aid of a building-yard fulcrum.

  I had brought myself to the home of a woman who knew everyone. Names were dropped here like water drips around a fountain. Gossip was the common language. I was sitting, on an aching bottom, at the centre of a social spider's web which might be anchored to any point in Europe.

  'You knew Lupercus?' I croaked. I hate to be repetitive, but I was in no condition for more sinuous oratory.

  'Such a nice man. Very genuine. Very generous.'

  'I'm sure! You have a wide circle of acquaintances.'

  'Oh yes. Most of the boys from Rome pass through here at some time. I am famous,' stated Claudia complacently, 'for my hospitality.'

  That was one word for it.

  'A woman of influence!' I threw my next dice with a casual air. 'How are you on the incumbent of the legio Fourteenth Gemina?'

  She seemed equal to anything. 'Would that be Priscus? Or the new one, Gracilis?' Apparently both had hung up their armour on her cloak-peg.

  'The new man.'

  'I've met him once or twice.'

  'Nice man?' I hazarded before I could stop myself.

  'Oh very!' She took it at face value, luckily. Her sense of humour – assuming she had one – would be jolly and obvious, rather than my twisted kind.

  'Has Gracilis visited you recently?'

  Whatever else he indulged in here – and it was best not to speculate – Gracilis must have been asking the same questions as me. She answered with a knowing wink I could hardly tolerate: 'I believe he did!'

  'I expect he had a good explanation for turning up here?'

  She laughed. It sounded unattractive and I noticed she had several teeth missing. 'Something about a hunting trip…'

  'That old line!'

  'Oh he must have meant it, dear – a group of Gauls were taking him.'

  Gauls? I already had my hands full with the German interest. This new complication was more than I liked while my brain was infused with aromatic wine.

  'What was he after?' Apart from pipping me in the search for Civilis and Veleda.

  'Wild boar, I believe.'

  I tried a different tack. 'People at Moguntiacum are worried about what's happened to his bedchamber slave. Has Rusticus gone along on this Gallic safari to keep his master well groomed behind the spear?'

  'There was no one like that with him.'

  I decided not to ask any more about the Fourteenth's infernal legate. I would only find myself trying to track down some pitiful runaway slave who might simply have seen his master's absence from home as a chance to make a break for it.

  I gave in, smiling. Claudia was pleased to see she had defeated me. So pleased that she condescended to add, 'The Gauls were paying for everything.'

  I had to know. 'I hate to be pedantic, but you do mean they were treating Florius Gracilis to his visit here to you?' She assented without speaking.

  I had him now. If the Fourteenth Gemina's legate was being trailed around on an extended sweetener of this kind, Vespasian would swipe his name off the list of officials before anyone could blink.

  'What sort of Gauls were they?'

  'Potters,' said Claudia.

  I wondered why she had chosen to inform on this client in particular. Germanic rivalry with Gaul? Annoyance at the blatant way her services had been offered for bribery? I decided it was the commercial dishonesty. Claudia being a businesswoman herself; she would naturally hate fraud.

  'I won't embarrass you by prying further. Look, we were talking about Munius Lupercus. The war was a long time ago, and I'm struggling to find leads. I'm even faced with the prospect of going across the Rhenus to follow his route as a captive. Does your useful network of contacts extend to the other riverbank? You won't have met the prophetess -'

  I should have known better. 'Veleda?' cried Claudia Sac- rata. 'Oh I know her!'

  A faint mood of exasperation coloured my tone: 'I thought she was incommunicado? I heard she lived above the treetops, and that even the ambassadors who went from Colonia to negotiate terms with her had to send messages via the men in her family.'

  'That's right, dear.'

  A dreadful thought struck me. Did you take part in the Colonia embassy?'

  'Of course,' murmured Claudia. 'This is not Rome, Marcus Didius.' That was certainly true. German women obviously liked to be at the front of things. It was a terrifying concept to a traditional Roman boy. My upbringing was outraged – yet fascinated too. 'I have standing in Colonia, Marcus Didius. I am well known here.'

  I could guess what ensured her prominence – the universal status badge: 'You are a wealthy woman?'

  'My friends have been kind to me.' So she had creamed the tops off some handsome Forum bank accounts. 'I helped choose the presents for Veleda; I provided some of them. Then I fancied seeing foreign parts, so I travelled with the ambassadors.' She was as bad as Xanthus. The world must be full of intrepid idiots trying to catch some fatal strain of alien marsh fever.

  'Let me guess…I was grinning despite myself. 'The men might have had to follow the rules that preserve Veleda's sanctity; you, however, somehow wangled a woman-to-woman chat? I suppose the venerated wench has to pop down from the tower some time – to wash her face, let's say?' This arch description seemed to fit the discreet atmosphere of Claudia's house, where Jupiter, the guardian of strangers, must have his work cut out protecting people desperate to find a polite phrase for asking their way to the latrine.

  'I did my best for her.' Claudia Sacrata looked sad. 'You can imagine the life the poor girl leads. No conversation; no society. The menfolk who guard her are a feeble lot. She was badly in need of a chin-wag, I can tell you. And before you say anything dear, I made a point of asking about Lupercus. I never forget my boys if I find a chance to do one of them a good turn.'

  That angered me. 'A man's death in foreign territory is no subject for gossip! Was Lupercus someone you giggled over in the Bructian groves? Did she tell you what she'd done with him?'

  'No,' replied Claudia crisply, as if I had impugned all womanhood.

  'Not fit for civilised ears? What did she do – hang his head up for a lantern, sprinkle his blood on her private altar and stick his balls among the mistletoe?' Rome, horrified for once by practices even more barbaric than we could devise ourselves, had outlawed those rites in Gaul and Britain. But that gave no protection to anyone trapped outside our frontiers.

  'She had not seen the man,' replied Claudia.

  'He never reached the tower?'

  'Something happened on the way.' Something worse than what would have happened had he arrived?

  'What was it?'

  'Veleda couldn't say.'

  'She must have been lying.'

  'Veleda had no reason to do that, dear.'

  'Evidently a nice girl!' This time I allowed my irony to grate ferociously.

  Claudia was looking at me with her mouth turned down.

  When sh
e spoke again, there was a hint of complaint: 'I've given you a great deal of my time, Marcus Didius.'

  'I appreciate that. I'm finishing now. Just answer this: have you ever been in contact with Julius Civilis?'

  'We met socially in the old days.'

  'Where is he now?'

  'Sorry, dear. I thought he went back to The Island?'

  For the first time, her answer sounded disingenuous. I decided she knew something. I also realised that squeezing Claudia Sacrata once she had clammed up was too daunting for me. She looked like a loose ball of duck down, but her will was formidable. I had also run up against an unshakeable tribal clannishness.

  It was hopeless, but I flogged on anyway. 'Civilis has disappeared from The Island. He could well have made his way south again, hoping to re-establish his old power base. I heard he was back among the Ubii and Treveri,' I started factually, 'and I feel it may be true. His family lived in Colonia.'

  'That was when Civilis was attached to the Roman forts.' 'Maybe, but he knows this area. Any suggestions where I can make enquiries?'

  'Sorry,' she repeated. I was one Roman who must have ceased to be a nice boy.

  We were closing the interview. Claudia's good nature reasserted itself as she asked again if there was anything she could do for me. I told her I had a girlfriend waiting -who believed I had just stepped out of doors for a basket of bread rolls.

  'She'll be anxious!' Claudia reproved me prudishly. She provided comfort for married men away from home, but wrecking relationships on her doorstep was a proposition that deeply offended her. 'You must hurry back at once.' She led me to the door herself – a formal courtesy of the house. No doubt when she was letting out a general, she liked her neighbours to spot the purple. They would be less impressed by today's cheap visitor.

  'So how do I find Veleda?' I asked. 'All I know is she lives among the Bructeri. They're a far-flung tribe.'