Hero of Rome trt-1

by Douglas Jackson

  ‘You!’ The voice reverberated with disbelief and Valerius’s heart sank as he recognized it.

  Crespo.

  But all he could do was play the part he had created for himself — and buy time. This confrontation was all about power and rank and a legionary’s natural inclination to obey a command. He injected his words with a touch of parade-ground authority. ‘Centurion Crespo, you have exceeded your orders. Release the prisoners and I’ll escort them back to Colonia. Any dispute over the ownership of the slaves will be settled in the courts.’

  Crespo stared back at him, gimlet eyes glittering. He remembered the stinking awfulness of waking up on a Londinium dung heap, and the humiliation he had endured in the hut at the Silurian hill fort. This man had been responsible for both. Unfortunately, he was also a tribune of Rome, which meant Crespo had to curb his natural inclination towards violent retribution. Yet something wasn’t right here.

  ‘You seem to be all on your own, pretty boy. I wonder whose orders you have… if you have any at all,’ he said thoughtfully.

  Valerius ignored the insult. ‘I don’t need orders, Crespo. This uniform carries the governor’s authority and flouting that authority will see you hung from a cross.’

  Crespo nudged his mount forward and reached towards the belt at his waist. Valerius’s right hand shadowed the move, hovering over his sword hilt. The Sicilian laughed and carefully retrieved the scroll bearing his mandate.

  ‘My instructions, tribune. Centurion Crespo is ordered to secure any or all of the property of Lucullus, augustalis of Colonia, on the instructions of the procurator, Catus Decianus. I think you’ll find that includes his slaves. If you don’t have something official countermanding my order, I’ll ask you to step aside and I’ll be on my way.’ The thin lips twitched in a humourless smile and his voice fell to a whisper. ‘And we’ll have our reckoning another time. Because, believe me, pretty boy, there will be a reckoning.’

  ‘His property doesn’t include his daughter.’ Valerius said it loudly enough for the men at Crespo’s back to hear. If he could plant a seed of doubt there was a chance. Crespo’s style of leadership was unlikely to have made him popular and if the soldiers who followed him could be swayed… But Crespo was a predator, with a predator’s instinct for any weakness. Something in the way Valerius spoke awoke the wolf in him. He heard it howl and the smile transformed into a grin of anticipation.

  ‘His daughter. So that’s it. You didn’t come all this way to round up a few dirty old slaves, did you, pretty boy? You came for the priest’s daughter. Full of surprises, you are. Here was me thinking you only liked boys. Vettius, bring the Celt bitch up here.’

  One of the riders turned and rode to the second cart, where he untied the rope holding Maeve and used it to pull her, stumbling, to the flank of Crespo’s horse. Valerius felt raw anger flare within him when he saw the bruise on her cheek and the half-shut eye. He reached for the rope but Crespo flicked it away from him.

  ‘Not so fast, pretty boy.’ He leaned forward and swept Maeve effortlessly on to the saddle in front of him. ‘What’s she worth to you?’

  Valerius froze. He understood that Crespo was trying to goad him into a fight. The other soldiers edged closer and their hard eyes never left him. If he reacted now against odds of a dozen or so to one he might take a few of them with him, but probably not Crespo. And if he died, Crespo couldn’t afford any witnesses to the murder of a Roman tribune, so Maeve would die too.

  ‘What’s she worth?’ the centurion repeated. As his captive struggled in his arms he ran his hands over her shoulders, breasts and legs. ‘Not bad. I think I might have her for myself tonight. And after I’ve had her Vettius and his Mules can have her too. Then she’ll only be fit for the dogs, so maybe we’ll give her back to you.’

  Valerius went cold and his mind moved beyond anger to that place where only Crespo’s blood would pay for the indignities Maeve was suffering. Her eyes pleaded with him to act. His heart told him to launch himself across the gap and ram his sword point beneath Crespo’s chin and up into his brain. His head said wait.

  Thunder filled his ears and he wondered if it was the thunder the British champions heard when they threw themselves against the Roman shields. Perhaps the thunder of Taranis that sent them to a warrior’s death without fear of what waited beyond. But it was only the thunder of twenty galloping horses.

  Valerius didn’t look round. He heard the ragged snorts of mounts that had been ridden hard and knew that behind him was now lined up a troop of Bela’s Thracian cavalry wing. Crespo’s expression didn’t change but the men around him backed away from the long cavalry spears.

  ‘Five hundred denarii.’

  Crespo frowned.

  ‘I’ll give you five hundred denarii,’ Valerius repeated. ‘Take it, or we take her and you get nothing.’

  He saw Crespo’s eyes counting the spears behind him. Maeve sat very still with her head bowed and he couldn’t read what was in her eyes. Eventually the centurion gave a sharp laugh. He knew he’d been outmanoeuvred but saw no sense in crying over it. There’d be another time. He allowed her to slip to the ground. ‘You heard him, five hundred denarii for the British slut,’ he shouted. ‘If he doesn’t pay, his honour is mine and I will bury it in my latrine where it belongs. March, you lazy bastards. We’ve wasted enough time here.’

  Once the little convoy had moved out of sight Valerius dismounted and helped Maeve to her feet. She stood motionless as he cut the rope from her wrists, revealing a glistening band of bloody flesh. Her eyes had the unseeing stare so familiar in legionaries who had fought one battle too many.

  On the way back to Colonia she sat on the saddle in front of him and at one point her body began to shake uncontrollably. She was still shaking when they reached the townhouse her father had once owned. He knew he should tell her about Lucullus’s death but feared the news would break her already fragile link with reality. Falco’s wife was waiting for them and she cleaned and bandaged Maeve’s wounds before putting her in Valerius’s bed.

  While she slept, he sent word to Cearan — and waited.

  XXIV

  When Maeve finally woke two days later Valerius sensed a deep change in her that he didn’t have the wit to understand or the understanding to approach. She emerged from the bedroom pale and exhausted, still wearing the torn blue dress, with dark shadows around both eyes. Her strength visibly returned with each spoonful of the thin soup the militia commander’s wife had recommended, but she would not meet his gaze and spent hours staring into the distance as if she were searching for something.

  Valerius fretted at his inability to reach her and in the evening he could bear no more. He took her in his arms and held her, deciding that now was the time to tell her of her father’s death. But as he breathed in the sweet, jasmine scent of her hair, she stiffened and began to struggle in his grasp, squirming and scratching, forcing him to release her. When she was free she backed away with a look of disgust that twisted her beauty into a parody of itself.

  ‘Maeve,’ he pleaded.

  She shook her head wordlessly and a high-pitched keening came from her throat. With a single movement she took the front of her dress in two hands and ripped it to the waist. ‘This is what you want,’ she hissed, finally finding a voice that was as cracked and broken as one of the pots the despoilers had dropped in her father’s atrium. ‘You want these.’ She took the twin bounty of her breasts in her hands and offered them to him. ‘You paid for them. You paid for me.’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ she spat. ‘You made a slave of me. You bought me from that animal… and… now… you… own… me.’ With the last five words she tore the dress still further and she was naked, her lovely body still bearing the marks of her ordeal, the scratches and the bruises and the invisible stains of Crespo’s assault. ‘So take me. Isn’t that what Romans do with their slaves? Take them whenever it suits them. Rut with them wherever it takes their fancy.’

  She w
as sobbing now, but sobs of life-consuming fury.

  ‘Your father…’ he tried to say.

  ‘Is dead or he would have come for me. He would have saved me or died in the attempt, not watched as some foul-breathed pig violated and ruined me.’ She shook her head and he knew she was remembering each moment of her shame. ‘When I saw you in the roadway I knew I was safe. I knew that you would fight for me and that if you died I would die by your side. I would have been glad. Instead, you watched while my honour was stripped from me. Coward,’ she snarled, and she threw herself at him, nails tearing at his eyes. ‘Coward. Coward. Coward.’

  Valerius fought her off, grabbing the flailing arms and avoiding the teeth snapping at his face. Her head whipped back and forward as if she were possessed but she was still weak and the savagery of her fury burned out in a few minutes. She went limp in his arms. He picked up her slight body and carried her back to his bed, where he sat in the darkness, listening to the sound of her fractured breathing.

  At one point during the night she said quietly: ‘You may sell me again if you wish, for I do not want to be a burden to you. But you must call me by another name. I am no longer Maeve of the Trinovantes. I am a slave.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ he said, because he could think of nothing else to say.

  ‘You would not understand,’ she replied. ‘You are a Roman.’

  Next day, in the misty stillness of the dawn Valerius stood with Falco as the little merchant’s body was carried from the villa to the burial ground beyond Colonia where a square pit, ten paces by ten, had been dug. Maeve was still too weak to attend and did not hear the bard sing his praises or see the things he had loved placed around him by the people he had loved. A few treasures, at least, had survived Crespo’s ravages. Cearan was first, carrying an amphora of the Calenian wine Lucullus had often shared with Valerius; then Cearan’s wife, Aenid, with an intricate gold torc discovered behind a loose brick in Lucullus’s storeroom; a slim, dark-haired waif of a girl Valerius didn’t recognize carefully placed a gaming board and pieces beside his body; his finest clothes and favourite stool; and finally his father’s sword, which he had kept hidden for seventeen years.

  Once, a priest would have said the sacred words and made the sacrifices, but the druids had all been driven from the east long ago. Instead, an elder from the settlement by Cunobelin’s farm performed the rites, and as he did so Valerius allowed his eyes to wander over the mourners.

  Apart from Falco, who was here to represent Colonia’s council, the Roman merchants and traders who had profited from Lucullus had discovered more pressing business today. But the Celt’s Trinovante cousins had gathered to honour his passing to the Otherworld. They stood in a compact mass, with Cearan at their head, tall, sombre figures, broad-chested and proud. Their dark eyes sent Valerius an unmistakable message as he stood, slightly apart, with Falco. It said they may have been long conquered but they still knew how to hate. He remembered Lucullus’s words on the night they were drunk together: there are men, great men, proud warriors, who live in the ruins of their burned-out huts and watch their children starve, because they once had the temerity to stand up for what was theirs. Now he was seeing those men with his own eyes. The heirs of Caratacus. Unlike the compliant Celts who frequented Colonia, they wore long belted tunics over tight trews and had thick plaid cloaks draped across their shoulders. He could see how their hands itched for their weapons and their war shields. All they needed to make them an army were their spears and a leader.

  ‘Will there be trouble?’ he asked the militia commander.

  Falco shook his head. ‘I don’t believe so. Cearan is no fool and he has influence among the Trinovantes as well as the Iceni. They are angry, as they have a right to be, but they are not organized.’

  Valerius wondered if that was true, but Falco knew his business.

  ‘When do you leave for Glevum?’ the wine merchant asked.

  ‘My orders came through this morning. The First cohort will march in a week and I’ll be with them.’

  ‘And Rome?’

  ‘I’ll kick my heels for another month in Londinium. It doesn’t seem to matter so much now.’

  ‘Have dinner with us on Wednesday, then. Just the old soldiers, Corvinus and the like. No Petronius, on my honour. How is she?’

  He thought for a moment. How to describe the indescribable? ‘Changed.’

  Falco shook his head. ‘That man is a monster.’

  ‘He promised me a reckoning and I’ve vowed to fulfil that promise.’

  Falco placed a hand on his arm. ‘Do not waste yourself pursuing Crespo. Go back to Rome and make a new life. Forget him.’

  Valerius watched the final planks being placed over Lucullus’s grave. Crespo was not the kind of man you could forget. If you did you were likely to end up in a river with a knife in your throat. But perhaps Falco was right. Everything had changed. All the certainties in his life had vanished with Maeve’s love. Her reaction had shocked him, somehow turned him inside out. Since then, he had swung between extremes of pain and anger, shame and regret. How could she believe he was a coward? He was a Roman tribune and he had saved her life. If he had been a Briton they would both be dead now, and Crespo would still be in Londinium with her father’s treasures. In the end he was faced with the certainty that he had lost her. So, yes, he would return to Rome and leave the procurator and Crespo to continue destroying other lives. He shook his head. It was time to go home.

  Before he left the burial ground, he sought out Cearan. He knew the Iceni would not want to meet him but also that he was too wellmannered to refuse. He discovered the tall noble talking seriously with a group of Trinovante elders and Valerius again thought how kingly he looked. Cearan needed no golden circlet to prove his lineage; it was written in the aristocratic planes of his face and in the quiet way he wielded his power. If the gods had been kinder here was the true leader of the Iceni.

  Cearan caught his eye and frowned, but a few moments later he came to Valerius’s side.

  ‘You were Lucullus’s friend, but I wish you had not come.’ The Iceni’s voice was taut. ‘It is difficult enough to soothe the passions your people have aroused without the sight of a scarlet cloak to inflame them further.’ He shook his head. ‘Sometimes I wonder if your Emperor truly wants peace. Even as I try to douse the fires, your procurator throws fuel on the flames with his demands for the repayment of subsidies that were accepted in good faith, but he now claims were merely loans. Lucullus was the first, and, yes, perhaps the most foolish, but he will not be the last. These people,’ he nodded towards the Trinovantes, ‘did not need another grievance against the Romans. They look towards the slope yonder and see the land they once farmed being worked by British slaves under Roman masters. Now their leaders, men who beggared themselves to ensure their tribe did not starve and accepted the Roman way because it was the only means to retain their dignity, are to be ruined. Their patience is at an end, tell your governor that.’

  Valerius studied his companion. ‘And what of your patience, Cearan? Will you abandon your people because of a single setback?’

  The Iceni stiffened. ‘Not a single setback. There have been others. While I counsel peace, men meet in the forest at night and come back with talk of a return to the old ways and the wrath of the goddess. The priests are among us again. Can you persuade the governor to endorse Queen Boudicca as regent and accept her daughters as King Prasutagus’s joint heirs?’

  Valerius thought of the report he had written which was still with the clerk. He would deliver it himself and risk Paulinus’s anger. ‘I can try.’

  ‘You must.’

  ‘What will become of her?’

  For a second Cearan was puzzled by the sudden change of subject. Eventually he said: ‘I will take her north to share our home. She will have a life. It will not be the life she knew, but it will be a life.’

  XXV

  Gwlym’s first indication that he wasn’t dead was the scent of crushed marigold, accompa
nied by a bitter liquid that burned in his throat and filled his body with a warm, reviving glow. Warmth. That was the true puzzle. He had thought he would never feel warmth again. The last thing he remembered was the chilly embrace of the river overwhelming his body and his mind, and the sensation of surrendering to an all-consuming, but not unpleasant, numbness.

  ‘Can he travel?’ The voice seemed to come from a long distance away and the mumbled answer was unintelligible. Mentally, Gwlym tested the fibres of his limbs and came up with his own answer.

  ‘Yes.’

  It seemed unlikely, but he must have spoken aloud because a presence loomed over him and he opened his eyes to discover a distinguished silver-haired man of early middle age studying him intently, his expression wary and respectful. ‘I am Volisios, lord of the Iceni, keeper of the northern Marches, and I have awaited your coming.’

  Gwlym allowed his head to fall back and closed his eyes. He was safe.

  In truth, the answer turned out to be premature. It was another day before his legs recovered the strength to allow him to walk, and another still before he felt confident enough to venture beyond the door of the roundhouse whose owner had discovered him beached and freezing whilst collecting stones from the river. Volisios rode ahead to prepare the way, but before he left he provided Gwlym with a pony and an escort of six men. The roundhouse was within the stretch of disputed border land between the Iceni and the Catuvellauni, and though an encounter with a Roman patrol was unlikely it could not be ruled out. Only when they crossed a narrow, muddy stream and he saw the guards relax did Gwlym do the same. But the instinct for self-preservation honed during all the months in hiding had returned, and his eyes constantly roamed the country around him. He found it a depressing, alien place. Low, threatening skies bore down on a flat landscape that seemed more liquid than good solid earth. The ponies squelched their way along soggy paths and through reed beds from one piece of dry ground to the next with a reassuring confidence, but Gwlym sensed the guards were nervous of him. During the few halts he was left alone with a little food and his own thoughts.