by Jack Whyte
“You said you were seven. What happened to the other two?”
The centurion heaved an enormous sigh. “One of them was killed, and not too long ago. His name was Ludo. The seventh one was Rufus. They cut the heart out of him, but they didn’t kill him. They used him, then they threw him away—a casualty of war. Rufe was our leader, really, if anyone was…” He subsided for a moment. “Yes, he was, although I’ve never thought of him that way before. He was definitely the man we would all turn to in a crisis. But they made him absorb one blow too many and it sickened him. By they, of course, I mean the army—not the brotherhood and not the fighting army. I really mean the faceless, nameless, pissant pen-pushers, the ferret-faced, heartless clerks and gutless functionaries who really believe they are the ones who keep the empire safe. I doubt if any of those bastards has ever met a fighting soldier in the flesh. They certainly don’t treat soldiers in the field like living, feeling beings. And they gutted poor Rufus. He resigned early last year, the fellows told me. I didn’t even know until now.”
He stood with his head down, gazing sightlessly at the surface of the table in front of him, and then he sucked in his breath and stood erect. “He did the job he was supposed to do,” he said. “He warned them precisely what could go wrong, and they went right ahead and behaved exactly the way he had warned them not to, and the result was a bloodbath.” Varrus had the distinct impression his friend was speaking to someone far beyond the room in which he stood. Perhaps even to the absent man Rufus himself. “And when Rufus went in again and cleaned out the rats’ nest, those same useless incompetents arrested him for insubordination and court-martialled him for mutiny. Or they tried to. The brotherhood intervened, the court martial was quashed, and Rufus was exonerated. But the damage had been done and he decided he had had enough. I’m told he requested his release, his honourable discharge, and he walked away without a backward look, after twenty years.”
His shoulders slumped and he turned his head slightly towards Varrus. “Poor bastard. Of all the people I’ve ever known in the armies, I would never have imagined that could happen to Marcus Licinius Cato.”
He sighed again. “Listen, I have to go and talk with the new legate. But those fellows you saw—Leon and Stratus and the Twins—they’ll be back here later this afternoon, around the fourth hour, for a cup of wine. So if you’re free, why don’t you come by and join us. I have no doubt you’ll find out much more about the Ring, if you do, because these are the fellows who shattered it.”
Varrus was already wide-eyed with anticipation. “I’ll be there,” he said, “but if I don’t get some work done right now, Demetrius will be terminating my employment.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
“Quintus! Where have you been? I’ve been waiting for ages! What took you so long?”
Varrus had not even known he was later than usual until Lydia came running to him the moment he entered the house. She was laughing almost giddily as she seized both his hands in hers.
“We can do it,” she whispered, almost breathless in her excitement. “We can be married—tomorrow—or today!”
“Wha—?” It was the thing he had least expected to hear and he had to sit down, quite suddenly. “But what about Dominic? I told you, he’ll never agree to that.” He was shocked to discover that, faced with the imminent curtailment of all the freedom he had known, and the immediate assumption of a lifetime of responsibilities, a part of his mind was quite violently unwilling to come to terms with his becoming a married man within days.
“No, not at all, Quintus!” Lydia was saying. “Da says it’s a grand idea and we should do it before he goes back to Londuin! He says the best thing for everyone is if we do what we decided to and just go ahead with a quiet family marriage with no one outside the family ever the wiser. For now, at least.”
She paused, but only to draw breath before continuing. “But come the half year, we’ll be able to take our friends from here with us and travel down to Londuin with the next load of iron ore, and he’ll put on an enormous celebration there that all our friends in Londuin can attend. Isn’t that wonderful? And in the meantime, you and I will be man and wife here in our own home.”
Looking at the dancing excitement sparkling in her eyes, he felt his heart swell up with love for her and he laughed out loud, forgetting all his misgivings. His dearest wish had been granted—merely a little more quickly than he had anticipated.
He pulled her close to whisper into her ear. “Forgive me, my love,” he breathed, feeling her shiver with delight as his breath tickled her ear. “But I would never have thought any woman, even as small and perfect a being as you, could take the legs from me, let alone the breath. Your father actually agreed with us. That is—” He stopped and shook his head. “That is truly surprising. I can scarce believe I heard you say it.” He tipped her head up to kiss her. “So be it,” he said. “I love you with my whole being and your tidings make me very happy. Now, I had come in to tell you something, but then you surprised me with your news and drove everything else out of my mind.”
She laughed. “Then speak up, Master Roman, for you may not have another opportunity.”
“Hmm. That sounded alarmingly truthful,” he said. “So be it, then. There’s someone I want you to meet. I left him outside.”
She cocked her head to one side. “That sounds very mysterious. Who is it?”
“A boy. His name is Simeon. I told Ajax I’d bring him to meet you, to see if you’d like him. He’s in the yard.”
“Why would you think I would want to—? You left him outside?” She threw up her hands. “You had best tell me what this is all about, and quickly.”
He did so, and when he had finished she looked at him, frowning slightly. “So. You brought home a boy, an orphan, Simeon of Somewhere, to be an apprentice or a stableboy, and if I like him, he will stay with us. Is that correct?”
“I suppose it is, though it sounds like an ultimatum when you say it like that.”
“What else could it be but an ultimatum, my love? You made an important decision and you made it without asking me for my opinion. What kind of boy are we talking about here? How will he affect our lives together? How old is he, and am I likely to like him, a complete stranger?”
Quintus shrugged, his expression slightly mystified. “He’s a boy, my love. An orphan. He thinks he might be ten years old but could be twelve. And if there were any doubt in my mind about your liking him, he wouldn’t be here, because I would not have brought him. Arbitrary as my decision might seem to you, I thought about it carefully today before I decided to do anything we might not be able to live with, and I brought him here for you to form your own opinion.”
“Where will he stay, if I accept him?”
“Anywhere you want to put him. I’m sure he won’t care. It won’t matter to him where he sleeps, in the stable or in the smithy, as long as he has a roof over his head and food in his belly.”
“Well, then, take me to him. Let’s see what he looks like. But what will you do with him if I detest him on sight?”
“I’ll take him back to the armouries. He doesn’t know why he’s here. He thinks I might need him to take back a message for me.”
“Why would you need to send back a message?”
“Ajax has some old friends coming to his quarters later for a cup of wine, and he invited me to join them. But I think I’ll send a message to say they can carry on without me. You and I have far more important things to talk about than whatever those fellows will be discussing.”
“No, Quintus. If Ajax invited you, he wants you there for some purpose.”
“No, my dear, I don’t think so. Believe me, it was a spontaneous invitation.”
“Nonsense. Ignatius Ajax doesn’t understand what spontaneous means. He always has a purpose. You should go, Quintus, and meet Ajax’s friends. Invite him to the wedding. Tell him to bring Demetrius Hanno and to come here at mid-morning on Saturn Day. Now, take me to this boy.”
* * *<
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—
Varrus found Ajax at Demetrius Hanno’s side in the armoury, and he told them both about Lydia’s approval of taking on the boy as an apprentice, and then about the upcoming, unplanned wedding. The first thing they both asked him was what they could present to the bride as wedding gifts. The question surprised him, and Ajax was more than happy to point out to him that here in Britain, the ancient Celtic traditions of giving household gifts to the newly married couple applied even in Roman-British families. Varrus had decided months earlier what he himself would present to his wife as a wedding gift, as part of the Roman ceremony of spouses trading possessions in acknowledgment of their mutual interdependence from that moment on. Dylan had told him that his wealthy and discriminating clients would frequently purchase bolts of precious and exotic fabrics as gifts for just this purpose, and he had decided to surprise Lydia with precisely such a gift when she eventually consented to marry him.
Hanno had been busy at the forge when Quintus came in, and seeing begetting action as it so often did in his business, the younger man quickly became involved in hammer-welding the smith’s newest blade, helping in the necessary but never tedious business of flattening and stretching the malleable metal, then folding it back on itself. This particular blade had been worked and reworked thirty-two times by then, and it would undergo the procedure at least ten more times before being judged worthy or unworthy of being accepted for the next step of the blade-making process.
It was only when a boy came looking for him, to summon him to Ajax’s quarters, that Varrus became aware of his surroundings again. He set the blade back in the coals, calling to Hanno that he was doing so, then set his tools back into place on their respective racks before removing his leather apron and heading off to join the armourer and his friends.
He knocked on Ajax’s door and stepped right in to find everyone silent and looking at him in that unmistakable, slightly awkward way of people interrupted in mid-speech. He stopped at once, one foot still on the threshold.
“Ah, finally, there you are,” Ajax said. “I was beginning to think about having you dragged here if need be. I knew once you started working on that blade that it would take more than the offer of a cup of wine to rip you away from it. We have been talking about you.”
Varrus stood still, unaccountably hesitant to commit himself to taking the next step into the room. The four unknown men were staring at him expectantly and curiously, two of them nearly identical in appearance, and something in the atmosphere was making him feel distinctly uncomfortable and ill at ease.
“Why?”
“Hmm?” Ajax said, a tiny line between his brows. “Why what?”
“Why would you be talking about me before I arrived? You people are all old friends, are you not? You have a long, shared history, and I am no part of it in any sense. You have not seen each other for six years, so why would any of you want to talk about me?”
To his surprise, Ajax smiled and turned to the others. “Now do you believe what I was saying earlier? It must be a familial trait—speak out and be damned, even if you know not whom you’re speaking to.” Ajax addressed him as he moved to shut the door. “To begin with, you are wrong, though you cannot be expected to understand that yet, so all I can do is ask you to be patient. In the meantime, allow me to introduce my friends. From left to right as you look at them, their names are Thomas, Leon, Didymus, and Stratus. Thomas and Didymus are known as the Twins, for obvious reasons, although they are not related. I have known each of them for close to seventeen years. Fellow officers, I would like you to meet, and to welcome to our company, Quintus Publius Varrus, son of Marcus Varrus and grandson of Titanius Tertius Varrus.”
Varrus was thunderstruck to hear Ajax speak his name—his true name—aloud to Roman military officers. But before he could say a word in protest the four men stepped forward as one, their hands outstretched to greet him, and one by one they looked him straight in the eye and smiled warmly as they shook with him, and stepped back to give place to the next in line. All of them said how great a pleasure it was to meet him, and he was left gaping open-mouthed at Ajax.
“You are wondering what’s happening here, I know. Why I would expose you to strangers by using your real name while knowing you to be a fugitive from the Roman authorities in Londinium.” He grinned. “Well, with these four knowing who you really are, you could not be better protected. So come and sit down and have some wine and we’ll tell you about what’s making you feel so foolish.”
He moved to the wide work table that now held nothing but two jugs and six fine clay cups. One of the jugs held wine, Varrus knew. The other, he presumed, held water. The armourer pulled out a chair, waved Varrus down into it, then started pouring wine and adding water, and as he did so he spoke over his shoulder. “Tell him, Leon.”
Leon dug his fists into the small of his back and stretched his spine before sitting down opposite Varrus. His friends arranged themselves on each side of him, leaving the chair on Varrus’s left vacant for Ajax.
“Your name is safe with us, Magister Varrus,” Leon said. “And remaining protective of it, and you, will be an honour. As soon as Ajax discovered we were here, he knew we would want to meet you.” He picked up his wine cup and raised it in a silent toast to Varrus, and the others joined him.
Varrus stood up again instead, pushing his chair back from the table with his leg and frowning as he looked again from man to man, including Ajax.
“Why?” His tone was blunt. “How would Ignatius Ajax know such a thing—that you, four men closer to my father’s age than to mine and utterly unknown to me, would wish to meet me? And what does that signify?”
“It signifies loyalty, Magister Varrus, and debts unpaid,” the man called Stratus said. “And it entails an obligation, from us to you.”
Varrus moved his head slightly to look at Ajax. “I am being patient, as you asked,” he said, “but that patience is growing strained. So if you can make things clearer to me, I believe this would be the right time to do it.”
“Oblige me, if you will, Magister Varrus. If you’ll stop scowling like a condemned thief and sit down and drink your wine like a civilized man, I’ll explain.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Quintus Varrus did not often find himself at a loss. Self-confident and assertive by nature and disposition, he had never found it necessary to learn how to dissemble, and so had grown accustomed to speaking out about whatever was in his mind. At that moment, though, there was nothing in his mind—or rather, there was nothing in his mind that he could understand at that moment. But he forced himself to sit again, and picked up his wine cup.
Ajax sank into his own chair and stared at Varrus. “I’m trying to find the best place to begin, Magister Varrus,” he said slowly. “It’s not easy, because everything I am about to tell you—No, everything we are about to tell you will run contrary to the disciplines by which we govern our lives. We spoke earlier today, you and I, about our former legate Placidus Pompey and the reasons for his removal. We finally broke the Ring. We—”
“We. Your secret military police, you mean. Your Mithraic Order.”
Ajax cocked his head slightly sideways, his eyes swivelling to take in his four companions, none of whose faces betrayed a thing. “Magister Varrus, I am trying to explain. Believe me, it is more complicated than you could ever suspect. First of all, you misunderstood entirely what I said about the Mithraic Order being Diocletian’s military police—No, wait, if you will!”
Varrus leaned back into his chair.
“The emperor formed a corps of military police to enforce military law among the legions. I am presuming, perhaps incorrectly, that you know there is a difference between martial law and civil law?”
Varrus nodded. “Martial law is far more stringent and rigorous than civil law, and it needs to be. I understand that.”
Ajax nodded back. “There was nothing secret about the emperor’s military police corps. It worked openly. Most infringements of mi
litary law involve corruption, and most of that is petty, small in scale and personal. Organized corruption, however, involving enormous volumes of theft and the mobilization of large numbers of men, is another matter entirely. Regular policing practices, open as they are required to be, are laughably inadequate against widespread conspiracy when the crimes involve wealthy and powerful men and senior officers with access to privileged information.
“Are you understanding me so far?” He peered directly at Varrus, who nodded wordlessly. “Good, then,” he said. “Keep listening…If you are going to fight rot on a massive scale like that, with stakes as high as those I am describing, you need secrecy you can depend on. That is a sine qua non of being able to work against that kind of power. When you’re dealing with the kind of organization we were facing—the Ring—nothing is more important than secrecy. And that is what brought about the inclusion of the Mithraic Order, a secret society with origins that are lost in the vaults of history, but which relies heavily on secrecy and silence in order to safeguard its mystic rites and sacred rituals.
“And so, under Diocletian, volunteers were sought among the Mithraic initiates. For the first time ever. Theoretically, that meant membership in the police corps was open to nearly every soldier in Rome’s legions, since more than eighty of every hundred soldiers belong to the order. That meant, by extension, that very soon thereafter everyone in the world equated the order with the military police.”
He scratched his cheek with one finger. “That was a lie, deliberately engineered and propagated.”
Varrus offered no reaction of any kind to that, and Ajax continued.
“You were born with a defective knee, which meant you could never join the legions. That means you are not, and cannot be, a member of the Order of Mithras, because you lack the essential qualification of being a soldier. Let’s sail around that inconvenience. Tell me, if you will, what do you know about the order?” He raised both hands, palms towards Varrus. “I promise you, that is not a trivial question.”