Hadrian's wall (28 page)

"So you've said," he remembered, as if she'd commented on the weather.

"I overheard it being discussed in the hill fort of Arden Caratacus, the man who captured me."

"You spied on him." It was more accusation than praise, which puzzled her.

"With my maidservant. We suspected something was amiss and hid in a hayrick to hear their talking." She paused, trying to find some diplomatic way to say what she must confide next, but finally gave up. Their senior tribune wasn't just rogue, he was traitor. "Arden was plotting with Galba."

"Was he really?" Her husband's tone was mild.

"Brassidias rode in with some soldiers to meet the barbarians. He said he was going to be transferred to Gaul, and there is a question of imperial succession, and soldiers are being drawn from the Wall for possible civil war on the Continent."

Marcus said nothing. Valeria's uneasiness increased. What did he already know? Had she ridden like the wind to warn him of nothing?

"The barbarian plan is to overthrow all Roman rule in Britannia," she went on. "If you can muster reinforcements from the south, you can stop them when they attack. Probably you can forestall any attack at all."

He looked at the tapestry covering the battle mural. "Where's Savia?"

It seemed an odd digression, given the weight of her news. "I had to leave her behind to delay their pursuit."

"The Celts freed her, didn't they?"

"Yes, but she didn't seek such freedom-"

"What did they do for you?"

She flushed. "Kept me prisoner for six months-"

"Stop it." His voice was ice.

She was bewildered. "Marcus? What's wrong?"

"Stop your lies. I'm humiliated enough."

"Lies?"

"You didn't spy on Arden Caratacus, did you?"

"I did!"

"You heard what you're telling me in his bed."

"That's not true!"

"Isn't it? Then answer me this. Did you, or did you not, sleep with that conniving, treacherous, double-dealing piece of donkey offal who abducted you?"

How could he know? She couldn't speak.

Her husband stood to loom over her again, now a pillar of humiliation and rage. "Did you, or did you not, shame me and mock me and ruin me before every respectable man and woman of Rome?"

"How can you say these things?" All appetite had left her.

"Did you, or did you not, play the part of one of their pagan gods, and dance at their sacrificial ceremonies, and ride and hunt like a man, and work in the dirt like a peasant, and eat like a Hun as you've just done, and disgrace your own family's name for a hundred generations?" His voice was rising.

Furious at her own emotion, she began crying. "I rode here to warn you-"

"You rode here to betray me!"

"No, Marcus, no! You've got everything all wrong!"

"Where is Caratacus going to attack, Valeria?"

"Here!"

"I should concentrate my forces here, at the strongest part of the Wall?"

"Yes, yes!" she sobbed. "Here! I think so. He's coming to attack, and I want to save your life-"

"Save whose life, Valeria?"

She looked at him mutely, not understanding.

"Save your husband?"

She nodded, dumbly.

"Or save your lover?"

"Marcus, please…"

"You didn't ride fast enough, Valeria. Galba reached me first."

She closed her eyes in despair. "Don't listen to Galba! He's your enemy!"

"He outpaced you and told me of your lust for a barbarian. Did you like the roughness of this so-called Caratacus, Valeria, who names himself for a famous Roman enemy? Did you enjoy his crudity?"

"Marcus, don't believe-"

"Shouldn't I? Brassidias!" He roared the summons.

Boots rang across the stone floor of the commander's house, and Galba made an entrance in full armor, sword at his side, his chain of finger rings jingling at his waist, his bearing ready for war. He snapped to stern attention. "Yes, commander?" There was no surprise in his eyes.

"Is this the woman that you were told of at the hill fort of Arden Caratacus?"

"The same, commander."

"The woman who fled my house in the middle of the night to attempt an assignation with the tribune Clodius?"

"The same, commander."

"The woman who shamed Rome by becoming the lover of a barbarian?"

Galba bowed his head. "So I was told, commander."

"And who told you of this?"

"Arden Caratacus. He boasted of possessing the body of a daughter of Rome."

"What proof did he have for this boast?"

"A trophy, commander."

"Would I recognize this trophy?"

"You gave it to your bride on the night of your wedding."

"A ring, you mean? And how do I know you're telling the truth?"

"Because I brought it back with me. Because I have it here." Galba reached in a pouch at his belt and tossed something that rang as it bounced across the table, coming to rest near the praefectus. It was her ring with the intaglio of Fortuna.

Had Arden given it to Galba to betray her? Certainly fortune had deserted her.

"No!" she protested wildly. "Galba came to Tiranen to plot with Arden. It's been a plot from the beginning to manipulate and discredit you, Marcus-"

"Answer me! Did you sleep with that Caledonii animal?"

"He's not an animal."

"Answer me!"

Her voice was small. "Yes." She struggled for explanation. "We were drunk from a ceremony, and it was a meaningless thing, and I came back to warn you-"

"It was not a meaningless thing!" His fist came down on the table with a bang, and its leg buckled. Valeria shrank, fearing a beating. He was in a rage. "By the gods, betrayed already! Our marriage bed scarcely warmed!"

"You don't understand. I was a prisoner-"

Marta appeared, summoned by the clamor. Her eyes darted from one aristocrat to another, her expression a combination of curiosity and smirk. This scene would be all over the fort within an hour.

"Get out," Marcus snapped at her.

The slave disappeared.

The praefectus turned back to his wife. "And yet somehow you found the freedom, the moment it entered your head, to ride blithely back to the Wall. To tell me how to dispose of my forces."

"To warn you!"

"I've had my warning. From Galba Brassidias."

"He's the traitor!"

"He's our agent, Valeria. He's been treating with this Caratacus bastard for years. He fills the barbarian's head with foolishness and keeps the Celts off balance. You had no idea what was going on in that fort. No idea what your secrets meant."

His contempt stung. Now she was getting angry. "Isn't the emperor ill? Aren't powerful men choosing between him and his son?"

Marcus didn't reply.

"Aren't troops being sent to the Continent?"

"What of it?"

"You're in peril!"

"From you! You betrayed me!"

"I was confused! I came back-"

"To betray me with your words!"

"No!"

"Caratacus sent you to mislead me about the attack. To seduce me with your sex. To make us ready for an attack in one place while he strikes at another. All this he boasted about to our senior tribune, Galba Brassidias."

"No…" It was a moan.

"He's used you, Valeria. Caratacus seduced you, and persuaded you to betray Rome. To engineer the death of your husband. To serve as an agent of confusion-"

She was shaking her head in despair.

"And breach the Wall."

"Galba has twisted everything all around."

"Galba set a trap. For Caratacus and for you. And now it has snapped shut on the first one of you."

Valeria looked at him in disbelief.

"We can beat the Celts if we're ready," Galba rumbled. "It's persuading a pitched battle in a favorable place that's difficult. I've convinced Caratacus that I'll help him get through the Wall, but we'll pinch him off and destroy him when he does."

"See!" Valeria exclaimed. "Galba's going to let Caratacus through the Wall! Let me go to Arden, Marcus! None of this bloodshed will be necessary! I'll warn him, and no one will have to die!"

Marcus laughed, the bitter laugh of a man who sees his marriage and its political influence in ruins. His wife had shamed him, and what had he ever given her but love and honor? His only chance now was victory in battle. "Let you go to Arden? How you must wish it! You'll rue the day you left his protection. You're a traitor to the Roman state and the destroyer of our marriage, and after the battle I'll deal with you in accordance to ancient law."

"Ancient law?"

"A Roman husband has the right of divorce. Of discipline. Of taking the life of an adulteress if her treachery is grave enough, as Cato and Augustus and Constantine have said. You know that. You've risked that. Of losing your life by stoning or drowning or a noose around the neck." She was dizzy with fear. This couldn't be happening. "Marcus-" "You might wish to use a dagger or poison to assuage your shame, but I'm not going to give you that chance. You'll wait here, in locked confinement, for my final decision after the battle. And the next time I let you out, it will be to watch the torture and death of your barbarian lover."

As I did in the beginning, once more I depend on the crisp and soldierly memory of the centurion Longinus. He hobbles to me on a crutch, a good sign that infection of his smashed foot has not advanced up his leg. I remember his challenge to me when I chose him as the first to be interviewed. He demanded that I understand Hadrian's Wall. Am I any closer now than I was before?

"My congratulations, centurion. You appear to be recovering."

"I'm too old to recover. The best a warhorse can hope for is to endure. So I endure the pain of this damned foot, I endure the bureaucracy of the retirement list, I endure the prattle of nurses, and I endure the dirty jokes of decurions that I first heard two decades ago."

"It sounds like my interview might be an improvement."

His smile is wry. "When an imperial inspector becomes amusement, you know life isn't worth piss. It's time to get out of Eburacum."

"To your farm?"

He collapses, without invitation, onto a stool. "No, I'd never be able to work it, not as a cripple. I'm selling it. An old trumpeter named Decinus has opened a wheelwright shop and has offered to teach me the parts I can do sitting down. We'll fart and drink and curse together and keep each other from being too lonely. It's not a bad fate."

Sunset, sunset. Each of us must come to an end, and why isn't the way better prepared? A warrior's death is not so terrible, perhaps, compared to retirement. And yet how ready would I ever be for a soldier's death? "You are a brave man, centurion."

"You learn in the army to do what you have to do. Afterward, some call it courage." He stretched out his injured leg.

I make a note to acknowledge his professionalism. This man is Rome. "I want to go back to when the barbarians attacked. I know the outcome of the battle, of course, but not its course. Was Galba really in league with the barbarians? What did he intend?"

Longinus considers a moment. "Galba was in league with himself."

"He did not really let the Celts through the Wall?"

"Of course he did! But he had a grander plan. Galba knew he couldn't beat Rome, not in the long run. Galba knew that even though the woman had been jailed, her return had seeded her husband with confusion and doubt. So he devised a battle plan that betrayed everyone but himself."

"You approved of this plan?"

"All the officers did, including Marcus, because it seemed brilliant. It had just one flaw, which didn't become apparent until the fighting."

"What flaw?"

He laughs. "There were more of them than we thought!"

"So it was not Valeria's fault. It was all imperial politics and the shifting of legions and the conspiracies of the tribes."

Longinus shakes his head. He's not a man to forgive or forget, not with his foot crushed. He's not a man to blame human failings on the maneuverings of armies. "The woman brought Marcus. The praefectus ignited the war and tried to transfer Galba. She inflamed the barbarian Caratacus. And Galba outwitted us all."

I sigh. "Galba would do well at imperial court." It's an impolitic statement to make to a near stranger, but I cannot resist it. One either plots to survive in Rome, or one stays on its fringes, as I have done. In a sense, my job is a form of hiding. Galba, in contrast, chafed at being on the fringe. "What was Marcus thinking?"

"That it was he who would win the battle and the glory. That was the genius of Galba's plan. Caratacus, Marcus Flavius, and Galba himself all felt they were on the path to victory."

"It was a trap for both Arden and Marcus."

"Engineered by Galba Brassidias." Longinus smiles thinly. "I rode withMarcus and got to see it play out. It's a beautiful spectacle, battle, until it's over and you're left with the stink of the dead and the screams of the wounded."

I look at his foot. "Did you scream?"

"Do you think I remember?"

We sit in silence for a moment. The gulf between us that he hinted at in our first meeting seems less deniable now. It is the gulf between virgin and harlot, or play and work. I have been around soldiers my entire career, but always afterward: questioning decisions, plumbing motives, and passing judgment on an experience I don't understand.

What do my reports really matter?

"What is it like getting ready for battle?" I impulsively ask.

Longinus isn't impatient with my question. He understands that I truly want to know. "Like prayer," he replies. "Not just that you're praying, though all sensible men do so, but that your preparation for combat is a ritual itself, a form of meditation. I don't know what it's like for others, but my mind is always full. I sharpen all my weapons. I eat sparingly, for quickness and to avoid infection from a stab in the gut. I order and reassure my men, taking their measure, and go over in my head what we must do as a unit and what I must do individually if faced with open combat: each thrust, each parry, and every fighting trick I've ever learned and taught. I dream the battle before I fight it. There's this solemn rasping of blades being honed, and the smell of oil being wiped from steel and applied to leather. The talk is quiet."

"You are not afraid?"

"Any sensible man is afraid. But soldiers have chosen their lot long ago and are far too busy trying to survive to let fear overmaster them. Besides, you have your comrades, and you share your fate with theirs. That's a kind of friendship a civilian can never know. We depend on each for our lives, and there's bittersweet love in that."

"Love? In a battle?"

"War isn't about hate, inspector. It's about communion."