The War at the Edge of the World (32 page)

‘But of course,’ the notary said, in a mild tone, ‘the story isn’t true at all. Merely the rantings of a condemned man. I don’t blame you for being troubled by it – in those circumstances, who wouldn’t be? But I happen to know that this whole sorry episode was planned and directed by somebody else.’

‘Somebody else?’

‘Hmm. In your report you mentioned several of the Pictish chiefs and leaders – one Talorcagus… Drustagnus… But it turns out that the conspiracy to assassinate the old king and several others and create a breach with Rome was led by a woman!’

Castus said nothing, but his heart was beating fast.

‘Yes! Who would credit it? A barbarian Cleopatra. This woman, Cunomagla is her name, was the wife of one of the murdered men. Apparently she wanted to use a war with Rome to extinguish the entire royal bloodline and leave the succession open to her own bastard offspring. So this unsavoury bitch, this
harlot princess
, arranged the poisoning of the king, his chief supporter and her own husband and fixed the blame on… well, on you and your party.’

Stunned, Castus sat with his jaw hanging loose. The man was lying – of course it was not true. That was his first reaction. But then, he thought, but then… He remembered those nights in the hut, when Cunomagla had come to him. Her offer of marriage, then her demand that he carry her promise of allegiance back to his commanders. If the other leaders were slain in battle, she would be left in control and Rome would not act against her. It made terrible sense. But everything inside him revolted against the idea.

‘I dare say,’ Nigrinus continued, ‘that the renegade Decentius was probably part of the plan himself. Apparently he was a former paramour of this Cunomagla woman. Oh, they’re most profligate, the barbarians – they wrestle in their kennels with anyone, their women fuck without thought or feeling. But soon enough she and all her people will suffer a just punishment.’

‘Dominus?’

‘It’s too late in the season now. But next spring the Augustus Constantius will lead an army into the north to harry the Picts and destroy their lands and homes. They must learn that they cannot rise against Rome with impunity! Then, no doubt, their leaders will die or be delivered up to us, and pay with their lives for their crimes. Your men, centurion, will be avenged.’

Castus managed to nod. A fierce anger was boiling in his throat. Anger against this sly officer and his duplicity; anger against the Picts. Anger against fate, and against Cunomagla for involving him in something he could not hope to understand.

‘Tell me something, centurion,’ the notary said. ‘Do you believe in the gods?’

‘Yes. Of course.’

‘And you believe the gods direct our fate?’

Castus blinked, uncertain. His anger had chilled into a glazed loathing.

‘Our friend Strabo had his own faith, did he not? His belief in that single all-knowing, all-loving deity. Do you think it was a comfort to him, his
Christianity
, when he died?’

Castus remembered the secretary’s death, the cruel knife, the blood. He remembered the look of fierce pride in his eyes.

‘He went to his god like a soldier.’

Nigrinus raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m glad of that,’ he said. ‘As for myself, I do not believe in gods. Not those of the heavenly realm. I tend to believe that we make our own fate. We make our own gods too, here on earth. And in time, if we prove faithful to them, these new-made gods, they may reward us. Do you understand my meaning, centurion?’

Castus held the man’s gaze for several heartbeats. He had the sudden unnerving sensation that the notary knew everything, could look into his mind and see revealed there every thought, every misgiving. That the man knew all that happened in the north; even, somehow, that he had directed it himself…

This was a battle of wills, Castus realised. Just as he could read the inner feelings of other men by the signs they gave away, so the notary was reading him. He would not allow himself to be drawn out so easily.

‘I just follow orders, dominus,’ he said.

The notary’s lips formed the shape of a smile. ‘Oh, but of course,’ he said. ‘And our emperor appreciates that. He is inclined to take your word that everything happened as you say it did, and not to look further into the matter. Not to consider any failures of judgement, or of courage, or any disreputable negotiations with our enemies, perhaps…’

‘I know nothing of such things.’

‘No, I’m sure you don’t, centurion. But you must see that you have a certain debt to pay, no? A debt of honour, of loyalty? And perhaps in the coming months you will have an opportunity to repay that debt.’

Castus swallowed down his anger, kept his expression neutral, but he knew that his eyes had turned cold and hard.

‘I hope so, dominus,’ he said. Then he stood up sharply and saluted.

‘One more thing before you go,’ the notary said. ‘This strange story the renegade told you – this
lie
, I should say. I hope you will forget it. I most certainly hope you will not relay it to anyone else. Because, you see, if it should come to my attention – and I am a very attentive person – that you’ve been telling anyone at all about this matter, I will arrange for you to be silenced. Understood?’

‘Yes, dominus,’ Castus said in an ashen voice.

‘Look at those barbarian bastards! They’re
laughing
at you!’

The twenty-eight recruits grounded their heavy practice shields and gazed across the puddled gravel of the drill field. At the far perimeter stood a group of Alamannic tribesmen, heavily bearded men in striped tunics and bright red leggings. At this distance, Castus could not tell whether the men were laughing or not, but he was angry enough not to care.

‘Back to your positions!’ he yelled. The recruits wearily hefted their shields and formed up in two facing lines. Castus stalked between them, brandishing his staff.

‘This time, stand your ground! Keep your formations and
push
… You’re not children! GO!’

Again the lines slammed together, the recruits grunting with the impact, leaning into their shields, each line trying to drive the other back. After only a few heartbeats the whole mass collapsed into confusion.

‘Gods below,’ Castus said under his breath. Cold October rain was falling steadily, running down his back, but his face was red and his neck swollen from shouting. This kind of angry display did not come naturally to him – most of it was just performance. But it was genuinely infuriating, after all the work he had put in over the last year training his previous century, to have to start from scratch all over again.

‘Pick yourselves up,’ he growled. ‘You’ll keep doing this until you can hold the formation and stand your ground. We can carry on all night if we have to.’

From away to his left, Castus could hear his new optio’s cracked scream. He had the rest of the men at the practice posts, doing
armatura
sword drill. The clack and smack of the weighted wooden blades against the wooden posts had been constant for over an hour. For the last month, this had been the routine: weapons training all day; drill; and running and marching with loaded packs. Route-marching every ten days, with entrenching practice. Horse-riding and swimming could wait. They had practised the regular formations: the testudo of locked shields, the attack wedge and the shield wall to oppose cavalry. Already six of Castus’s new recruits had been invalided out, too injured or exhausted to continue. Of the rest, there were eight broken noses, several cracked ribs and sprained ankles, two broken arms, and a great deal of near-mutinous resentment.

It was not their fault, Castus told himself. Half of them had never wanted to be soldiers anyway. They were labourers and potters, butchers and stable boys, farmers and dock workers: anyone who was neither a slave nor a member of the civic council had been called for conscription. A few were keen to revenge themselves on the Picts, but the majority had no desire to spend the rest of their lives under arms. The wealthier citizens had found ways to wriggle out of it, of course, and many others had fled to the fields, or even mutilated themselves to avoid enlistment. Only the unlucky, the poor or the genuinely vengeful remained. The rest of the new men were from disbanded cohorts of the Wall garrison. Some were reasonable soldiers, but most were older men in their forties or even fifties who had long ago forgotten the military disciplines. Together they made up a poor-quality stew. The only good men were the ten from the old century who had been away when Castus had marched north and had survived the battle at Isurium. He used them now as substitute trainers.

‘Macrinus, take over here,’ he said to one of these, and the man stepped promptly into place. Castus’s throat hurt, his head was aching, and he was tired of raging at the recruits. With no surviving training officers, the centurions and optios had to do almost all the bullying themselves. It would be a hard autumn, and a harder winter ahead.

Then again
, Castus thought as he strolled over to the practice posts,
you never know how a man will turn out
. Take his new optio, for example. Four months before, Castus would have discounted Claudius Modestus entirely – a shirker, a gambler and a drunk, a hospital-malingerer, a complainer… But Modestus’s brief brush with combat had changed him utterly. He was still far from perfect – Castus had smelled stale beer on the man’s breath several times – but he was showing himself to be a tough and enthusiastic deputy.
Give a man some prestige and some responsibility
, Castus reasoned,
and he’ll either rise to it or break
.

‘Come on, you cocksuckers! Come on, you fuckers!
Kill
them, don’t stroke them – that’s your
enemy
!’ Modestus’s voice had risen to a cracked screech. The recruits under his supervision were sweating heavily, labouring at the practice posts like slaves at a quarry face.

‘
Stab
with the point, you arse! Don’t wave it about! Do you wave your cock like that, Priscus, when you’re
fucking
? Eh? Put some balls behind it!’

Castus hid his smile. The same obscene words, the same threats and insults, in every legion’s camp all over the empire. He had heard them before so many times. Far away on the other side of the drill field, the Alamannic spectators were wandering off towards the beer shops and the brothel shacks that had sprung up among the ruins along the riverside. The rain was getting heavier now, and they had seen all they needed to see of the might of the Roman army for one day.

Back in his quarters that evening, Castus stripped to his loincloth and stretched to ease the tight ache in his muscles. He was bent double, clasping his ankles, when Valens walked in.

‘Message came for you earlier,’ the other centurion said, dropping onto a stool by the open window. Castus eased himself up, grunting, and heard his back click.

‘What was it?’

‘I don’t know, do I? It’s a written message… on a very nice quality tablet too.’

Castus winced, not just from the ache in his back. Valens knew well that Castus was unable to read, although neither man ever mentioned it. Sitting on the stool, he smiled slightly and fanned himself with the sealed wooden wafer.

‘Better read it to me,’ Castus muttered, pulling on his tunic. ‘You’re… closest to the light.’

Valens slid his thumb down the side of the tablet, breaking the wax seal, and then unfolded the two leaves.

‘
Aelia Marcellina to Aurelius Castus, greetings
,’ he read. He glanced up, his smile broadening, one eyebrow raised.

‘Just
read it
.’

Valens shrugged, went on. ‘
If you are well I am well. I regret that our parting was abrupt, and I never had the
… what does that say?...
the opportunity to thank you for your assistance
… Nice handwriting this girl’s got – she must have written it herself… Oh, don’t glare at me, brother! Very well…
My recent circumstances have not allowed me to communicate, but if you have a moment spare of your duties tomorrow I would be pleased to receive you at my lodgings and render my thanks in person…
She gives the address: the green portal, in the street of the glassblowers, left from the forum baths… Oh, there’s a postscript.
If you still have my father’s signet ring I would be very grateful if you could return it...
’

Valens turned the tablet over, holding it up to the light. ‘No sign of secret messages,’ he said. ‘No imprint of loving lips…’

Castus lobbed one of his boots across the room, and Valens dodged it.

In the autumn sunlight the city of Eboracum appeared a less desperate place than it had for a long time. The scars of war and plundering were everywhere, of course: blackened walls; broken timbers; shattered plaster. But the burnt debris had been cleared from the streets, the houses and shops patched up and reoccupied, and it was a living city once more, a place of civilisation rather than wreckage and despair.

It was Dies Solis, the Day of the Sun, and the men of the legion were allowed the afternoon free for the baths and kit repairs. Crossing the bridge from the fortress, Castus picked his way along the colonnades lining the main street of the city. Everywhere was activity: men unloading sacks and amphorae from wagons; men climbing scaffolding with hods of bricks or wet plaster. Anyone working in the building trade had been exempted from the military draft, and there were more than enough hands to help with the reconstruction. Merchants from southern Britain and Gaul had sent their barges up the river, bringing grain and wine and woollens, and luxury goods too. The space beneath the colonnades was crowded with flimsy stalls. Castus passed a herbalist’s and a shop selling hair tonics. The air smelled of cooking smoke and brick dust, cut wood and horse sweat.

There were plenty of soldiers in the streets too: many of the men of the field army had been billeted in the city, and all along the streets there were swaggering legionaries from the German detachments. Foreign troops too: bearded Alamanni with dyed red hair lingering outside the taverns and staring at the women; dark Mauretanians squatting around the public fountains. After centuries of slow provincial decay, Eboracum was once more looking like the vigorous frontier settlement it had been in the great days of the empire. And with the emperor himself in residence, it was also one of the centres of the Roman world.