Semper Fidelis (6 page)

^{CCIUS RECLINED ON}
one of the rather worn couches that graced his private dining suite in the mansio, and Ruso congratulated himself on his mature lack of jealousy as he noted that this room alone was three times the size of the space he was sharing with his wife. The housekeeper who had irritated Tilla bustled around straightening covers while Ruso and the remaining guests spread themselves across the other couches. While the mansio slaves in their matching cream-and-brown tunics trotted in to serve drinks, a confusing set of introductions was performed. There were four centurions, plus a man from the auxiliaries who explained that he was in charge of road patrols and proceeded to say nothing else all evening. Perhaps he was overawed. The others all had at least three jobs each. The granite-faced Geminus appeared to be in control of the recruits and of everyone else. Dexter had something to do with the maintenance crews. The plump one was in charge of stores and supplies, and smelled as though he had been checking out the wine stocks before he arrived. The one with thinning hair and a careworn expression was tasked with fobbing off the complaints of the locals, or as it was officially known, “Civilian liaison.” All gave the impression that they would be happy to shed a few titles in exchange for being posted somewhere else.
“So,” said Accius, helping himself from a bowl of hard-boiled eggs that

had been cut into halves and dolloped with some sort of green sauce, “no problems getting things lit in the rain?”
Geminus said, “All done, sir. Quick, quiet, respectable.”
“Good. I didn’t want funerals hanging over the proceedings tomorrow. How are the men?”
“Our lads are all right, sir,” put in Dexter, apparently speaking for the plump one and the careworn one as well. “It’s the recruits.”
“Hearing about the sacrifice to Jupiter seems to have settled them down a bit, sir,” said Geminus. “And they took heart from what you told them about Deva. We shouldn’t have too much trouble on the march.”
The recruits Ruso had met seemed glum rather than rebellious. It had not occurred to him that there might be any trouble on the long march west to legionary headquarters, but as he listened to the practical arrangements for packing and transport being discussed around him, it became evident that the recruits were being treated with a certain wariness.
“As soon as we get them back to base,” said Accius, dabbling his hands in the finger bowl held out to him by one of the slaves, “they’ll be split up between the centuries.” He smiled. “And while the rest of us continue to endure the ghastly conditions on this island, Geminus, you’ll be sitting in the sunshine on your little farm in Campania.”
Geminus inclined his head and said, “I shall, sir,” without a trace of humor.
Ruso reflected that Hadrian, who insisted on mixing with the ranks and sharing a military diet, was probably the only man in the army who did not grumble about his working conditions. No doubt the incoming troops would have plenty to say about the state in which the Twentieth had left the fortress at Eboracum. Meanwhile the Twentieth would have the satisfaction of knowing that the headquarters and their one occupied corner showed they were civilized men, even though they had long ago stripped the remaining buildings of anything that might contribute to the domestic bliss of their successors. Anyone who imagined that the legions were happily united in the service of the emperor was woefully naïve.
Reaching for a spoonful of the fish with leeks that had been a favorite recipe of his first wife, it occurred to Ruso that Claudia would not have been impressed with his conduct so far this eve ning.
You must make an effort, Gaius! Do try and join the conversation. People will think you don’t approve of them!
He doubted they cared whether he approved of them or not, but it was clear he was not going to find out anything interesting unless he asked.
“I was wondering, sir,” he put in when they seemed to have run out of things to say about the crop yields of the farm Geminus had bought in Campania, “why the recruits were sent here instead of being trained at Deva.”
“Because somebody has to garrison Eboracum while everyone’s up on the border building the emperor’s wall,” explained the tribune, as if it were obvious.
“And they look like soldiers to the natives,” added Geminus.
“Ah,” said Ruso, suspecting he now appeared dim rather than sociable, and not sure what to say next.
“It was thought,” continued Accius, helpfully filling the silence, “that if we trained them over here, they wouldn’t pick up bad habits from the older men back at Deva.”
“But it turned out they’d got plenty of their own,” observed Geminus.
“You’ve all done everything that could possibly be asked of you,” Accius assured the centurions. “I saw that for myself this afternoon.”
Geminus said, “I should have got rid of that lad before, sir. But sometimes a recruit like that comes good.”
Dexter wiped his bowl with a chunk of bread. “You can’t do anything with a man whose mind has gone.” He crammed the bread into his mouth as if there were nothing more to be said on the subject.
Ruso felt there was a great deal more to be said, but not here. Instead he reached for the water jug. “So how did they get the idea they were cursed?”
No one replied. He glanced up. The others were looking at him as if he were an earwig that had just crawled out of their lettuce. He had a feeling this was not the sort of reaction Claudia would have intended.
“The curse of the Britons,” said Geminus finally, “is that they don’t do what they’re told. A couple of them found out the hard way that they should have paid more attention in swimming practice.”
“Geminus dived in and rescued one of them himself,” said Accius, as if he were afraid his relative might be too modest to mention it.
“Lost the other one downstream.” Geminus shook his head, acknowledging defeat. “Then this week we lost one in a training accident, and they’ve put the two together and made up some tale that means none of it’s their own fault.” He clapped his glass down on a side table as if signaling the end of this depressing subject and turned to Accius. “I noticed the mention of discipline in your speech, sir. Very appropriate.”
“Ah, yes.” Accius reached for his own wine. “Of course, you know why we have altars to Disciplina.”
“To encourage the men, sir?” ventured the plump one.
“The same reason we have coins celebrating Concordia,” said Accius, taking a sip and looking around the room. “Because we like to pretend we’ve got it.”
“We do, sir,” agreed Geminus. The plump centurion gave a grunt that might or might not have been assent, the thin one looked round for a cue, and the silent one busied himself with his dinner.
Ruso wondered how much wine Accius had drunk. The wording stamped on coins was chosen at the very top, and—given the bad relations between the Senate and Hadrian—it was hardly tactful for the son of a senator to be heard criticizing imperial policy in a building where any member of the staff could be a spy. The spies, on the other hand, would not be anywhere near as interested as Ruso was in the loss of a few unimportant Britons— something Accius should have been concerned about but apparently wasn’t.
“I was wondering, sir,” he said, “if the second recruit who died had been in some sort of a fight.”
Geminus frowned. “Where did you get that from?”
Too late, Ruso realized that a fight might suggest Geminus had failed to keep control, whereas an accident could be blamed on the gods. “The body,” he said, unable to think of a suitable lie and wishing the tribune had found some women to invite. Women were good at filling embarrassing silences. Except for Tilla, who was good at creating them.
This time it was Accius who restarted the conversation. “Did Geminus ever tell you,” he said to the centurions, “how he and I first met?”
The fat and the thin centurions greeted this opening with the eagerness of men stranded on a lonely road spying an approaching carriage. The silent one did not appear to notice.
“We’re related, you know,” Accius explained. “On my mother’s side.”
Ruso, who knew this much already, surmised that Geminus was a useful sort of relative: distant enough not to be a social embarrassment but close enough to be claimed as family when he had marched home from the Dacian campaign, his chest sparkling with decorations for bravery. Apparently the eight-year-old Accius had been escorted onto the streets of Rome to watch him in the victory parade. Later, he had followed Geminus around the house asking every question he could think of about life in the army.
Geminus’s hard features softened slightly as his protégé reminded him of the marching lessons around the fishpond in the garden, and how Accius had taken to demanding the day’s watchword before allowing anyone to enter his presence.
“Do you remember that wooden sword you gave me?”
“Very well, sir.”
“Did Mother ever tell you Father confiscated it? I knocked over one of the statues in the garden while I was practising the thrust and twist. I wrote to the praetorian barracks to ask you for another one, but I think the slave must have been told to lose the letter.”
“I never got it, sir.”
“And finally, after all these years, I heard we were serving in the same province and I had the chance to thank you.”
The bald head dipped in acknowledgment. “You’ve made me very proud, sir.”
“And to apologize to you for being an insufferable brat.”
There was a brief silence while everyone waited to see if Accius would smile. Then they all laughed. Even Geminus. The subject of dead recruits was forgotten.

To his surprise he found his wife still awake and sitting at the table. Whatever was left of the food had been pushed to one side beneath a cloth. The flames of a triple-wicked lamp were dancing in the sudden draft from the door as she rolled up a scroll that had been laid out in front of them. He recognized the collection of poetry a friend had lent her for reading practice.

“If one of our poets had spoken this rubbish,” she said, tying it closed, “nobody would pass it on, and it would be forgotten, and good riddance. But this man wrote everything down, and now it floats about like somebody else’s hair in the bath. Who cares if his lady’s pet sparrow is dead?”

He sat on the bed and bent to tackle his wet boots. “The only other scroll Valens could lend me wasn’t fit for a decent man to read with his wife. It’s a foul night out there. How was your patient?”

“Pregnant, and very silly. Is it true three recruits have died?” “And one’s deserted.”
“He is the one we met on the way here. His name is Victor. I hope he is

somewhere safe in this storm.”
“I’m surprised more haven’t run off. They seem to be an unhappy bunch.”
He tossed the boots into a corner.
Tilla retrieved them and put them on the windowsill to dry in the draft.
“The girl said Fortuna has turned her back on Eboracum, and you should
be careful. She thinks it is only the recruits who are cursed, but I have
prayed to Christos for you—”
“I wish you wouldn’t keep doing that.”
“—and I will find a place to leave a gift for the goddess, just in case.” “Did she say how the second man died?”
Tilla frowned, as if she was trying to remember exactly what she had been
told. “The recruits were frightened of each other after the one who jumped
off the roof lost his boyfriend in the river.”
“His boyfriend?” That might explain the suicide. “Why were they frightened of each other?”
“She said, after the drowning, two of them were angry with Sulio.” “Was it his fault?”
“I do not think so. By the end I was as confused as she was. But one of the
angry ones is dead—”
“Tadius?”
“Tadius, yes—”
“Does she know how he died?”
“She was more interested in telling me how he bedded her and her sister.
The other angry one is Victor, and he deserted because he thought he would
die next.”
Victor, like Tadius, had been beaten up.
“Why?”
“I do not know. I do know he has a wife called Corinna.” Ruso scratched one ear. Civilian gossip might move fast, but it degenerated into nonsense the farther it traveled. If Sulio had killed himself out of
grief for a lost lover, he had waited a long time to do it. In the meantime
Victor had run away and Tadius was dead. “I’ll see if I can make some sense
of it tomorrow,” he promised her.
“Be careful.”
“I’m always careful.”
“Is it true the tribune will try to lift the curse with a sacrifice in the
morning?”
“Oh, hell.” Reminded, he reached down and lifted the shoulder plates of
his armor. The attached segments rose one by one into a shape that could
enclose a man’s chest. “He’s offering a ram,” he said, scowling at the orange
specks of rust. “Best not to ask why. Have we got any rags and some oil?” She delved into one of the boxes and pulled out a frayed linen ban dage.
“There is no sand.”
“We’ll just have to rub harder.”
Moments later he was wishing there had been an artist present to record
the ensuing scene of domestic bliss, marred only a very little by Tilla saying, “If my ancestors are looking, I hope they know that I am only helping
you because you are just a medicus and not a proper soldier.” He let it pass. “By the way, I think I’ve found out what our noble tribune
is really doing here, so far away from all the action.”
She paused with a length of oily bandage in one hand. “Husband, are you
jealous?”
“Of course not,” he said, demonstrating his indifference by the casual tone
of his denial. “But Accius made a tactless remark, and when it was obvious
people had noticed, he was very careful to explain that he isn’t deliberately
avoiding the emperor.”
“The tribune told you he is not avoiding the emperor?”
“Not directly. But he says he volunteered to come here because he wants
to see Geminus before he retires. The old man’s hanging up his vine stick
after he’s marched his men back to Deva.”
She frowned. “But if Geminus is marching his men back to Deva, why
come all this way to see him? Would they not meet there anyway?” “Exactly!” Even Tilla could see how obvious the tribune’s lie was, but she
did not seem as impressed as he had hoped. “Accius is the son of a senator,”
he explained, realizing he should have explained the background. “Most
of the Senate didn’t want Hadrian in charge. They don’t trust him.” “And because the father is not a friend to the emperor, you think the son
would travel all this way to avoid him?”
“Four of Hadrian’s opponents in the Senate were con veniently murdered
when he came to power. I have a feeling Accius may be distantly related to
one of them. Even if he isn’t, people find it very hard to forgive that sort of
thing. Of course Hadrian had nothing to do with their deaths—” “Why not?”
He blinked. Even now, there were times when his wife took him completely by surprise.
“Well, because . . . because you can’t do that sort of thing these days.”
The gods alone knew what went on amongst the Corionotatae when a new
leader took over. He said, “Everyone knows he wasn’t involved, because he
said so,” but this well-worn joke made no impression upon his wife. She
had already moved on to the next question.
“And did you tell him that is also why you are here inspecting the medical service?”
“That’s not the same thing at all,” he said. “I just didn’t want all the—” “Polishing?” she said.
“Fuss.” Outside, he could hear something loose banging about in the
wind. “Is there anything left in that jug?” He lifted the cloth. The movement revealed the dark rectangle of his sister’s letter.
“Ah!” Tilla reached out and thrust it toward him before he could cover it
up again. “You can read while I finish this. Quick, while there is still oil in
the lamp.”
“I’ll read it tomorrow in daylight.”
She shrugged. “Perhaps I shall take it and ask that handsome Tribune
Accius to read to me.”
“It’s no good,” he told her. “I’m not jealous.”
She took the ban dage from his hand and replaced it with the letter. Then
she slid the lamp nearer. The flames wavered in the draft from the window.
“All right,” he conceded, not sorry to abandon the cleaning. “Let’s get it
over with.”
Most of his relatives never wrote unless they wanted something, but, as
the head of the family, it was his duty to find out what it was before he refused it. He turned the thin wooden leaves to face the light and leaned
forward to make out the crowded lines his sister had inked onto them
several weeks ago in the sunny south of Gaul.
No wonder Tilla had struggled with it. Marcia’s spelling was always creative, but she could write perfectly legibly when she wished. This, however, seemed to have been composed with her eyes shut. If their father had
lived to see the outcome of her expensive education, he would have demanded his money back.
He ran a forefinger along the uneven line of script.
“ ‘Dearest Gaius,’ ”
he read, with difficulty.
“‘Greetings from your loving
sister. I hope you and Tilla are well and so are we although to listen to some
people around here you would never believe it. Little Lucius fell off a fence
yesterday and knocked his front teeth out. His mother made a great fuss.
Your brother complains all the time, and now he is shouting at me because
the man who says he will take this letter wants to get home before dark but
it isn’t my fault that nobody told me he was coming and I am writing as fast
as I can. Our mother and Diphilus are planning an extension on the west
wing and he and your brother argue a lot.’ ”
He paused. “The Tribune will be sorry he’s missing this.”
“The Tribune would read faster than you.”
“ ‘Good news,’ ”
he continued.
“ ‘Unless you have the same news for us we
have beaten you to it.’ ”
The swish of linen on iron fell silent. “She is pregnant.”
“It might not be that.”
It was.
He put a hand on her knee. “I’m sorry.”
“You must wish them well from us both.”
He carried on reading, not because he was interested in what his sister
had to say, but because he had long ago run out of reassuring things to say
about their own failure to conceive.
“ ‘Tertius is very pleased with me, as he should be, and is making sure I
take plenty of rest every day. I expect Mother has written to tell you we
will not have enough to live on when we are a family.’ ”
“Has she?”
“No, but it’s good to be forewarned.”
“ ‘As you know, poor Tertius has never really got the advancement he deserves. Well, really there is no future in making clay pots for the next-door
neighbor, is there? Of course he was grateful for the job when he was injured
and I’m sure they are very good pots but now he is as fit as you are and probably fitter because you are so old.’ ”
He paused again, waiting in vain for his wife to disagree.
“ ‘He is also brave and honest,’ ”
he continued,
“ ‘and quite clever in his
own way.’ ”
He said, “Not clever enough to keep away from Marcia.”
Tilla had gone back to polishing. He scanned the rest of the letter in silence.
So as you are the head of the family and Tertius has nobody else it must be
up to you to help, Gaius. We all know you are hopeless at putting yourself forward
but please think of other people and make an effort.
Gods above. His sister was starting to sound like Claudia before the divorce. Unfortunately, he supposed she was right: He ought to try and do
something for Tertius.
Having settled that, Marcia was displaying an unusual interest in current
affairs.
Did you know that Hadrian is on his way to Britannia?
The reason became clear in the next line.
I hear he has thousands of people on his staff. I’m sure he could find something for
Tertius if you ask him nicely enough.
Ruso shook his head in disbelief. He supposed it was his own fault. He
had once held several short and dust-covered conversations with Senator
Publius Aelius Hadrianus about treating the injured in the aftermath of a
terrible earthquake that had flattened most of Antioch and nearly killed
the reigning emperor Trajan. Some years later, when Hadrian had risen to ever greater fame, Ruso had been foolish enough to mention these fleeting encounters to his family. Instead of being mildly interested, his stepmother had been convinced that persis tent demands of
And what else did he say?
would help Ruso remember a series of cozy chats that ended with Hadrian saying,
If there’s ever anything I can do for you, my friend
. . . and Ruso thanking him and promising to be in touch
as soon as my stepmother’s told me what
I want.
He continued to read.
Please don’t let us down, Gaius. I know we are a long
way away and you probably don’t think about us much now you have managed to
get back into the army, but we are your family, and we will never get another chance
as good as this.
He sighed. Marcia was in for a disappointment. With luck, by the time he
had made his way back to Deva via every possible outpost and watchtower,
the imperial tour would have passed by.
He felt Tilla’s hand close over his own. “We will have a good life,” she said
softly.
For a moment he had no idea what she was talking about. Then he realized she had thought he was sighing over their lack of offspring. “Of course
we will,” he promised.