Marius' Mules IV: Conspiracy of Eagles (31 page)

“Pleuratus?” he whispered, leaning close.

Priscus looked round in surprise. “Senior tribune of the Ninth last year. Reassigned over the winter outside my jurisdiction.”

Fronto frowned for a moment, his mind furnishing him with a different picture of the dusty, tired-looking tribune. Neat and clean, well-shaven and clad in a toga. He was entirely unsurprised when the man spoke and his words carried the twang of a Greek-speaker.

“Apologies for my appearance, Caesar. I bear a missive from
Rome
for you.”

Caesar narrowed his eyes as Pleuratus proffered a sealed tablet. Taking it, he snapped the seal and opened the letter, his eyes running down the text as the tribune stood, breathing heavily and shaking slightly from what appeared to have been a long and fast ride.

An expert at reading Caesar’s moods, Fronto saw the tiny flicker of annoyance pass across the general’s eyes, while his countenance remained stony. Without a word, Fronto stepped behind Mamurra and Priscus, out of Caesar’s direct view.

“A
Taurus emblem
?” Caesar said, quietly and with cold anger. “A damn bull? Is the man an idiot? I should employ donkeys instead of men.”

Suddenly aware that his officers were standing in a half circle, silently waiting, Caesar took a deep breath. “Thank you, Pleuratus. Make your way back into camp and get yourself cleaned up and fed. I will have to ponder on my reply for some time before sending it.”

Pleuratus nodded, saluted, and reached up to the reins of his tired, placid steed that had been calmly munching on the rich grass. Turning the beast, he walked slowly and gratefully away towards the camp. Caesar frowned for a moment and then lowered his gaze and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I fear I have a headache coming on. Gentlemen, we will reconvene when Mamurra has all his measurements and plans. For now: dismissed.”

The officers began to scatter, going about their business, and Fronto watched for a moment before striding up the slope, passing the others and catching up with the tribune and his weary steed.

As he approached, the man looked round at the noise and, spotting Fronto, nodded a greeting. The legate fell in beside him and matched his tired pace.

“Pleuratus. I remember you. You came to my house last year from
Illyricum
with Caesar.”

“Yes. It was not the most friendly of meetings, if memory serves. I fear that we were over-haughty and unused to your ways, while you were not prepared for our uninvited intrusion.”

Fronto shrugged.

“I was probably having a bad day.”

“You were hung over. But then, after a year in
Gaul
, I have to admit to waking with a thumping head more often than used to be the case.”

Fronto paused for a moment, trying to work out whether he should be taking offence at the words. Deciding it was probably a gesture of equality rather than an insult, he smiled.

“You were assigned to the Ninth last year” Fronto said. “But not this year? Strikes me as a bit demeaning? A tribune on courier duty, I mean.”

Pleuratus nodded, his face slightly sour.

“It does not sit well with me, I must admit. I agreed to act as a courier for personal missives with the general’s family, not to carry messages for thugs and lowlifes.”

The tribune glanced up at Fronto as if suddenly realising that he had said something he shouldn’t. “Still, at least I won’t have to traipse into the forests of
Germania
and share a sponge stick with anyone, and that has to be a bonus.”

Fronto nodded and plastered a smile across his face as, behind it, his mind raced back and forth between the general and his ‘special’ courier, Clodius in Rome following senators around, and his sister, his sort-of-betrothed, and his old friend in the depths of the city’s intrigues. His spine began to itch at the thought.

“Can you do me a favour, Pleuratus?”

“What would that be?”

“When you get back to
Rome
, find the house of
Quintus Lucilius Balbus on the Cispian hill and deliver a message for me?”

“Of course, Fronto. I’ll come and see you to collect it before I leave. It may be a few days yet, hopefully.”

Fronto nodded absently. Something about the way Caesar had reacted to the letter suggested strongly that Clodius had once again overstepped the mark. The very thought that Faleria, Lucilia and Balbus were caught up in the affair make the hair stand proud on his arms.

* * * * *

Fronto stood on the ramp and took a deep breath.

The earth embankment rose from the downward-sloping turf near the bank to a full height of some ten feet, where it gave onto the first sections of the bridge.

Four days of construction and the beast of a structure now spanned some twelve yards of the water. For four days Fronto had managed to avoid having to set a single foot on the thing. In the selfish corners of his soul he was grateful that Caesar had given the bulk of the construction work to the Seventh and not the trusted Tenth.

No matter the numerous and high-quality libations and offerings the officers and men of the legions made to every Roman and native God they could name, progress was slow and dreadfully dangerous.

Each of the last three evenings, the reports had come in with fresh and wearying results: legionaries crushed by falling timbers, tipped into the swift flow and carried away screaming toward the sea, succumbing to a myriad of insane accidents. It was almost as though the construction was cursed.

Fronto eyed the timber with suspicion and nervousness.

What was already built certainly looked solid enough, but the thing still put the shits up him beyond all thought and reason. He had the horrible feeling that something nasty was lined up by the fates to happen to him today.

The legates were taking turns on duty at the bridge construction site and, fight it all he could, today was Fronto’s turn. He’d woken with a feeling of dread and disgust, only to discover that the thong on which his Fortuna pendant hung had broken and the lucky charm itself had vanished somehow, despite never having left his person outside his tent.

It was a bad omen.

As was being summoned by the centurion of the works, via a tired looking legionary with a bruise on his face the size of his hand – the result of yet another accident.

With pulse racing, Fronto stepped the last few yards of the great turf and rubble embankment and placed a foot warily on the timber walkway of the bridge.

Eleven deaths and twenty eight wounds – seven of them crippling – in just four days of work. Fronto had been determined not to add his own name to that grisly list, and had had a small tent erected near the bridge from which he could watch the work in the safety and comfort of the shelter.

And now, despite all his precautions, ill luck and the actions of others had conspired to bring him to this point: standing on the recently cut and shaped timbers, watching the grey-brown torrent rushing past below, visible through the side-rail. The bridge wanted him, of that he was beginning to become convinced.

With a deep breath and a nervous swallow, he took a step forward, alarmed at how the beam bowed very slightly beneath his foot. Lifting it urgently, he retreated a pace. The legionary beside him, sweating from his exertions and wiping away blood from a narrow cut on his forehead, frowned.

“It’s alright, sir. It’s just settling very slightly. There’s going to be a small amount of give until it’s properly bedded-in. Once a few carts have been across it it’ll be solid as a rock.”

“And in the meantime, I’m supposed to trust my weight to wood that bends?”

“Look, sir.” The legionary grinned as he jumped up and down heavily on the plank, his hobnailed boots leaving small indentations, clouds of sawdust billowing out from beneath the walkway. Fronto grasped the rail in horror, holding on for dear life.

“Stopthatstopthatstopthatdstopthat!” he rattled out nervously.

“Safe as houses, sir.”

“I’ve been in houses that have fallen down. Come on.”

Swallowing his nerves, he took three quick steps before allowing himself a breath. The bridge seemed unnaturally high, and the far bank distant enough that the woodlands covering much of it blurred into a single mass of green.

Tearing his gaze away from the far side and the river rushing beneath him, Fronto fixed his eyes on the centurion standing close to the current work site at the far end of the walkway, a small group of workmen and engineers gathered around him. Avoiding thinking further on the planks beneath him, he concentrated instead on the men.

They stood in a knot around a small mound that was barely recognisable in shape – just a grey-brown lump on the timber surface.

“Legate?” the centurion saluted as he approached. Most of the workers turned and followed suit, others unable to do so due to the burdens they bore.

“Your man tells me we have another fatality to add to the list.”

The centurion gestured to the men around him and, saluting, they scurried off past Fronto toward the landward end of the bridge, their passage shaking the timbers worryingly. Fronto gripped the rail until his knuckles whitened and frowned as he looked down at the dirty lump that lay between the two of them. The last workmen lowered their burdens and moved off out of earshot at the centurion’s gesture. Once they were alone, the centurion crouched by the body.

Fronto couldn’t help but notice with a heart-stopping realisation just how close to the open end of the bridge the man crouched. A strong gust of wind might just blow him back into the water. He resisted the urge to tell the centurion to come away from the edge. Gingerly, he crouched to join the strange conspiratorial tableau.

“Well?”

“I tried not to let too much on to the men, sir, but we fished him out from the debris where the next pile was being settled half an hour ago. He’s been in the water a day or two now at least.”

The centurion reached out and rolled the bloated, discoloured thonto its back so that Fronto could see what he was explaining. The legate felt the bile rise in his throat and had to swallow it and steady himself with his fingertips on the timber floor. The body was barely recognisable as a human, the skin blue-grey and bloated, with a waxy sheen. A green tint of algae had mixed in with the black, curly hair, along with scum and weed. The man’s white tunic had been stained an unpleasant grey-green.

“Not pretty, is it, sir.”

Fronto shook his head, trying not to breathe too deeply.

“We’ll have to try and check into missing soldiers – see if we can identify him.”

“That shouldn’t be hard, sir.”

Fronto frowned in incomprehension. “Meaning?”

The centurion reached out with a pointing finger and jabbed the stained tunic. “A white tunic, sir. Not a red one. He’s an officer, not a legionary.”

Fronto blinked. How had he missed something so obvious? A white tunic. His eyes ran down from the face, past the shoulder and to the upper arm. Yes. There it was: a broad stripe. A senior tribune.

He rocked back on his heels and nearly fell as he realised he was looking at the days-old, bloated corpse of tribune Pleuratus, Caesar’s personal courier. He’d assumed the man was still mooching around the camp waiting for the general’s summons to ride back to
Rome
.

“How the hell did he end up in the river?” Fronto asked quietly, already acknowledging the cold certainty in his belly that it had been no accident.

“That’s one of the reasons I sent everyone away as soon as I’d had a good look at the body, sir. Rumour will get out, of course, but not for a day or two.”

His pointing finger moved on from the white tunic to the bloated grey-blue flesh of the man’s hands and lower arms. A dark, black ring ran around the wrist. A glance across at the far side confirmed that the mark existed on both wrists.

“His arms were bound?”

“Behind his back, I believe. There’s similar marks on his ankles. The rope’s gone somehow. Don’t know whether the knot had come undone, or maybe a fish ate it or something, but whatever the case, the rope’s gone. That means I can’t confirm it, but I’m pretty sure whoever did it tied a big rock behind his back and dropped him in the water. I’d guess they expected it to sink into the mud and disappear, but the rope’s come away and the rock’s sunk, so the body’s floated up to the surface.”