‘Ha,’ she replied with sour admiration and then looked at Dog. ‘He is right, all the same. He does it beautifully.’
‘Domina…’ Drust said, and she stopped him with another look.
‘Aha, it speaks. I thought you were going to stand and gawp at my naked feet all night.’
Drust lost all ability to think or talk, felt his face burn, but she took pity on him and sighed, waving one hand dismissively.
‘I have told you both before, I am in no danger of harm. I am more at risk from falling off a horse on a wild night ride than I am from anyone in Eboracum.’
She fanned the toe to hasten it drying, then gave in and stretched out a white arm with the brush in it, waving impatiently at her son. He smiled, took it and knelt at her feet.
‘My mother, my sister, my aunt the Empress – they are all there in Eboracum, and this poor excuse for a town at the edge of Ultima Thule is the imperial court until the emperors decide otherwise. All Rome is ruled from Eboracum, and has been for two years and more. It will not be when old Severus goes to his ancestors, but whisper on that.’
She shifted slightly and frowned at her toes. ‘Kalutis was to get my son and myself back to Emesa, where my mother was until recently. That was to avoid entanglement with anyone else – my aunt, any one of three emperors or all of them.’
She looked at them both. ‘I tried not to let my son become a counter in their games of latrones. Did you know the name for that in Emesa translates as “the game of brigands”? Never was anything better named for the way they play in the imperial court. And the court is here. Everyone who is anyone is here – the Palatine is emptied and they have brought all their plots and venality with the baggage.’
‘All the more reason for getting you away from it,’ Drust answered, and she smiled, then jerked her foot with a sudden giggle, followed by a scowl. Her son smiled.
‘Don’t tickle, you fiend. You know I can’t stand it.’
She made herself comfortable again while the boy expertly washed toe after toe with paint.
‘It is of no consequence to me now,’ she went on, ‘that I am here and will go to the imperial apartments. There will be some polite stab-work as to which of the residences I end up in, but we are four women against some poor men, so that will work in my favour.’
She had a moment of bliss, it seemed, when her son blew on her toes to dry them and Drust wished it was him putting the expression on her face, then forced himself to stop thinking it.
‘You,’ she said suddenly, opening her eyes, ‘would be well advised to ride off into the night, mind. They will imprison you otherwise. It will not seem like it, but that’s what it will be, and you are no longer of any use or consequence, so are in considerably more danger than me.’
Drust and Dog exchanged glances while the Domina exchanged feet.
‘Go to Kalutis. If I am right, he already knows of all this. I will make sure word is sent to him to bestow the reward as promised. Then I would get out of Eboracum and Britannia. Out of the Empire entirely if you have sense.’
Dog looked stricken. ‘I hoped to serve you, lady.’
She pouted. ‘Fascinating though that is, I don’t see quite how.’
‘I want them all,’ the boy said, smiling. ‘They are so fierce – and they saved us, Mother. Did you see how Dog fought in that tower? Slice, slice, slice…’
She frowned at him, then brightened. ‘Well, if you and your companions can make your way to Emesa, I will find shelter for you all. I doubt you will make it, all the same.’
None of the others disagreed with that when it was put to them, but all of them were sure the lady was right. If they didn’t gallop for it, they’d be sixed, for sure.
So they got together what they could and went to the stables, where the half-dozing guard leaped up guiltily and then blew out his cheeks with relief when he saw them.
‘Thank all the gods above and below it’s only you lot.’
Then he frowned. ‘Why are you all here anyway? You are to stay where you are.’
‘Well,’ said Kag, ‘it isn’t to stop you being stone-ground by your mates for falling asleep on sentry.’
‘Ho, now lads, I was just resting my eyes…’
‘Rest them a little more,’ said Quintus, nodding to Ugo, who looked desperately round in time to see a massive hand come round his mouth, choking off his cry. Another pulled his helmet off, snapping the leather thong and leaving a rasp round his throat.
The man struggled, wild-eyed and gagging, but Ugo hefted the helmet and whacked it down with a sound like a cracked dinner gong. The man sank to the stable straw.
‘Is he alive?’ demanded Drust.
‘What do you care?’ Dog demanded, saddling a horse. Drust sighed with exasperation.
‘Because killing someone in the fucking Army will get you back in the harena – part of the morning crucifixions.’
‘They’ll never give over on hunting us down,’ Quintus agreed, and Dog finally got to it. He knelt, put two fingers against the man’s neck, then held the dull metal of the helmet close to his mouth.
‘Alive,’ he said finally, and there was relief in his voice. Now Ugo looked annoyed, for he had hit him as hard as he was able, and to find that it hadn’t cracked him to death only underlined how weakened he still was.
They resisted the temptation to run madly away in a flurry of hooves and flying mud. Instead, they walked as slowly and quietly as they could out of the mansione compound and onto the road. They’d have to ride on the road because the shining wet of it was all they could see, risking a cracked hoof or a strained fetlock.
So they ambled until they could trot and then kept that up until the daylight started, wan and pale. It began to rain again. Drust thought that their disappearance would be noted by now and the miserable sentry would be nursing a headache and the wrath of the optio. At some point, they would form up and start marching the Domina into Eboracum and, if there was a horse left to be had, a messenger would be striking out now, when it was light enough to ride hard along the verge.
‘We could wait and ambush him?’ Sib offered, but Drust did not want to risk it.
‘Push on into the vicus, get to Kalutis and sort this all out.’
‘We might have to wait and hide,’ Dog said, ‘until the Domina sends him word to pay us.’
‘Or turn him upside down and shake him until our rewards fall out,’ Ugo said, and Quintus clapped him on one wet, meaty shoulder.
‘I like how you think, big man.’
‘Do I really want to be a citizen this badly?’ Manius demanded sourly. ‘I am thinking I was happier before.’
‘No one was happier than before,’ Kag spat back. ‘But the money is good – and living is better still, so ride.’
* * *
The road up to Eboracum was cold and wet and swollen as a bad-toothed jaw with too many people, most of whom were army. In the daylight, grey as the segmented iron on their backs, the legionaries trudged in step, rank on rank, straight up the middle of the road. Carts lurched and trundled alongside, horns blew, vexillation flags fluttered and, in the middle of it all, a big panoplied litter swung in the strong arms of soaked naked slaves.
‘Gods above and below,’ Kag hissed as he came up on the rear of it all. ‘These are Praetorian. What the fuck—’
‘Just drop back and keep behind them,’ Drust warned. ‘Don’t try to push through. Some Big Crest is moving here and we’ll only attract unwanted attention.’
They attracted attention anyway, from the rear ranks of the marchers. A horseman swung round and trotted back to them until they could see that it was a fully armoured centurion of the Praetorian, the guards of the Emperor.
They might just as easily be escorting figs in ice, or some fabulously expensive and inventive whore for a high-born, Drust thought. Doesn’t have to be an emperor. Not at all…
But it was. The centurion removed his ornate helmet and cocked his head expectantly. Drust bobbed a bow from t
he neck.
‘Procuratores, your honour. Gladiators and others, bound for the harena here, at the pleasure of the Emperor.’
The man was burly, dark-skinned, olive-eyed and with a full beard whose black was streaked with grey and artfully teased into fashionable curls.
‘Macrinus,’ he said. ‘Centurion of the 1st. I will inform the Emperor, perhaps it will cheer him. The weather certainly does not.’
He laughed. Drust laughed and then had to force himself to stop because it was becoming manic. Macrinus reined round and trotted back down the ranks, which dutifully halted to let him cut in to the panoplied litter. Drust was sure he could hear the thoughts of the greybacks who waited in the drizzle, soaked through and wanting out of it.
‘Is it?’ Quintus asked, half afraid, half in awe. ‘Himself?’
‘The old Severus,’ Kag confirmed, scrubbing his beard, and then turned to Dog. ‘Hide that face… that gilded fool is coming back.’
‘He is a jnoun,’ Sib said suddenly. ‘I hear it in his voice. He is a jnoun.’
‘You think everyone is a desert demon,’ Manius said, and offered up a wicked smile that withered Sib. ‘Perhaps he has some chewing leaf on him.’
‘Keep silent on that,’ hissed Drust in a panic. The centurion was turning back to them when the head of the column reached the gates and horns blared. Lights sparked – the lanterns of the gate guards, trying to look efficient and alert.
People stood on either side of the road, carts and horses too, for this was a Roman town and they’d arrived too late to be let in. They would have to wait all the rest of the day in the rain now and the sullen faces gave away how they felt.
The centurion was heading for an old woman, a crab-handed affair of dark wrappings and a hood which fell away to reveal snake tendrils of grey hair. Drust spat a swift prayer to Jupiter to keep her spells away, but she just seemed to be waving a wreath of flowers and leaves.
‘Witch,’ Ugo muttered, and Quintus waved his hands and made ‘ooooh’ sounds to mock him.
‘It is the festival of Sementivae, I wager,’ Kag said, and Quintus snorted derision.
‘How could you possible know that?
‘We fought in it once. This time of year.’
Drust could not remember and did not know why a festival to Ceres, goddess of dirt-grubbing farmers, and Tellus, the Mother Earth they fingered, needed gladiator fights. Blood, of course, he decided. Every deity needed blood.
The old witch seemed to have hers up, for she was screeching and did not stop until Macrinus signalled two men out of the serried ranks to pick her up and carry her off, away from the road. They dumped her, none too lightly, beside a pack of watchers, who all ebbed from her as if she had the plague.
A cloaked and hooded man, festooned with cross-belted satchels, hurried up to the litter which had been set down – a medicus, Quintus said. For sure.
The centurion trotted back to them, frowning and dripping. ‘There will be a delay. If you want to push on, you can leave your horses at the gate and go on foot. Or stay here all night in the wet. I would not see some decent fighters felled by snot and fevers.’
‘Thank you, your honour.’
They bobbed and smiled and rode their horses as fast as they dared, right down the whole waiting ranks of dripping men, past the grounded litter and the gleaming, dog-patient slaves. The medicus, only his arse visible, was talking animatedly to whoever was inside the litter and Drust tried hard not to look.
The ostler wanted to haggle, but Drust paid what he asked, though it took all they had and a silver ring out of Ugo’s beard braids; he was scowling and promising dire revenge for it when Drust started to hurry them to the gate.
The guards looked them over, but they had seen the centurion wave them through and weren’t going to argue with that – anyway, they had more to concern them when fresh horns blew and the ranks stamped to attention in a rippling crash. Then they started forward, the litter was picked up and wavered along to the gate.
‘Jupiter’s hairy balls,’ Sib whimpered.
‘Keep moving, keep moving.’
Drust muttered it out like a long prayer, but he knew it would do no good – they were sidling along the wall, pressed close to the cold, damp stone when the lead ranks tramped through, their nailed boots echoing in the arch of the gate.
Then, like a bad dream, a horror jest from some vengeful god somewhere, the litter moved up alongside, so close Drust could see the sweat and rain on the slaves and the bulge of muscles trying to hold the litter level, hold it up, stop it from swaying.
They stopped and gawped. They shouldn’t have, but it wasn’t every day you got so close to an emperor. Drust smacked Ugo back into movement, was starting to heave in breaths of relief when they reached the far end of the gate’s arch and started to spill out to one side, clearing the way, dipping for shadows.
Then a slave slipped and the litter banged the curve of the archway. There was a querulous, annoyed shout and the curtains twitched, a face poked out angrily. They all stared. Dog stared. He looked at the Emperor Lucius Septimius Severus Augustus and saw a ravaged hawk of a face with the remains of a beard straggling over dark-skinned withered cheeks and a scowl that screamed hot-iron punishments.
The Emperor Lucius Septimius Severus Augustus stared back. Dog smiled weakly. The Emperor saw death grinning at him, surrounded by giants and black demons from his homeland.
He screamed and fell backwards into the litter.
Chapter Fifteen
He was still a centurion of the 1st even when he wore a narrow-stripe tunic and toga, though the gravitas was, for Drust at least, somewhat ruined by the thick wool socks Macrinus wore under his sandals.
The Praetorian centurion was not fazed by it at all, though he seemed ruffled at something. In the polished-wood Principia room, where braziers fought the damp, he sweated more than he should.
More than us, Drust thought, looking round, who had good reason to. Yet they had been in places such as this before and what was happening now was no worse than waiting for the Gate of Life to open and spill them out into the harena and the blare of people wanting blood.
‘Gladiators,’ Macrinus said, walking round to the desk and sitting closer to the bell-mouthed brazier. ‘I suppose you might have been once. I never saw the like of you.’
‘As your honour suggests,’ Drust offered, ‘we were not of the first.’
Dog cleared his throat and Drust cursed him. ‘Beg pardon,’ he added, teeth clenched, ‘save for Do— Crixus here. He was better ranked than the rest of us. And Sib here was a cart driv— a charioteer.’
Macrinus looked them over again and shook his head.
‘Crixus,’ he repeated slowly. ‘I never heard the name since tales of Spartacus – and that face. Gods above and below, you’d be remembered if you’d fought in Rome with that face.’
They were alone with him in what was the headquarters of the legion detachments currently lolling all over Eboracum – they were mainly, Drust had worked out, the Praetorian. Guarding the imperials, who were all in their disparate apartments wishing they were back in Rome; they had been wishing that for three years and looked no closer to uprooting the centre of Empire from here.
The room was small, with a tiled floor, neat desks and tally sticks, racks with slates and all the panoply clerks would need. Macrinus had one such slate in his hand and studied it, frowning.
‘I have had instructions regarding you people,’ Macrinus said. ‘Only found them when I reached here. Men, gladiators including some northern barbarian and mavro from Lepcis Magna or some such place. To be detained and held, especially the leader, one Drust.’
He frowned and studied Dog. ‘No mention of a man with his head on inside out, mind, but since the instructions came from the Emperor Antoninus himself there is no argument – he is galloping south from the naval storehouse camp even as we speak. The Prefect is with him.’
He seemed to be speaking more to himself than them and it wa
s clear to all that they were a puzzle. He had instructions to lock them up, Drust was certain of it, and no reason given as to why.
‘You accompanied the Domina Julia,’ he said, and they nodded and shuffled.
‘Saved her from tribals, your honour,’ Kag answered politely. ‘Scooped her and her son out of their clutches and fought our way back to here.’
Macrinus stroked his oiled beard and looked at them with his slight, popped eyes, glaucous as a fish.
‘You have influence there?’ he asked, and no one answered because no one was sure what he meant. Drust thought he was being sly, trying to establish if they were some sort of stud stable for a lecherous high-born with more money than sense or morals.
‘Influence, your honour? In what way?’
‘Is she obligated to you for your service? Likely to grant favours?’
‘Possibly,’ Dog answered carefully. ‘She is a priestess of the temple in Emesa. To Heliogabalus – who is Sol Invictus under another name. So is her son. Preserving the life of such a pair would, perhaps, gain a favour or two. Depending.’
‘Depending on what it was,’ Macrinus finished, then sighed. ‘What have you done to that face? And why? And why were the Domina Julia and her son far beyond the Walls in the first place?’
He clearly expected no answer and flapped a frustrated hand. ‘Look – I had instructions regarding the Domina Julia and her son. Take them to the imperial apartments of her illustrious cousin, the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. But when she gets here, I find she has been whisked off to the residence of the Empress and her sister and others of that family. A whole flock of Julias.’
Drust could sympathise – there would now be Julia Soaemias, her mother Julia Maesa, her sister Julia Mamaea and her aunt, the Empress Julia. What do you call them all, he wondered? A flock sounded too benign. A jewel of Julias? Poetic but lacking some sharpness. A javelin of Julias, perhaps…
Macrinus got up and paced, stirring the vexillation standards; the fluttering made shadows leap madly on the walls of the sacellum. Drust suspected they were in this sacred place because it was small and secure – it was where the standards were kept and venerated and in the centre of the room was a sunken pit which had a great bound chest in it, all the cash of every legionary in the Army. The money was kept here to deter thieves who would be committing sacrilege if they stole from the shrine; the standard bearers acted as treasurers of these funds, keeping track of what money was paid in and out.
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