The Iron Hand of Mars (25 page)

“Nice man?” I hazarded before I could stop myself.

“Oh very!” She took it at face value, luckily. Her sense of humour—assuming she had one—would be jolly and obvious, rather than my twisted kind.

“Has Gracilis visited you recently?”

Whatever else he indulged in here—and it was best not to speculate—Gracilis must have been asking the same questions as me. She answered with a knowing wink I could hardly tolerate: “I believe he did!”

“I expect he had a good explanation for turning up here?”

She laughed. It sounded unattractive and I noticed she had several teeth missing. “Something about a hunting trip…”

“That old line!”

“Oh he must have meant it, dear—a group of Gauls were taking him.”

Gauls?
I already had my hands full with the German interest. This new complication was more than I liked while my brain was infused with aromatic wine.

“What was he after?” Apart from pipping me in the search for Civilis and Veleda.

“Wild boar, I believe.”

I tried a different tack. “People at Moguntiacum are worried about what's happened to his bedchamber slave. Has Rusticus gone along on this Gallic safari to keep his master well groomed behind the spear?”

“There was no one like that with him.”

I decided not to ask any more about the XIV's infernal legate. I would only find myself trying to track down some pitiful runaway slave who might simply have seen his master's absence from home as a chance to make a break for it.

I gave in, smiling. Claudia was pleased to see she had defeated me. So pleased that she condescended to add, “The Gauls were paying for
everything
.”

I had to know. “I hate to be pedantic, but you do mean they were treating Florius Gracilis to his visit here to you?”

She assented without speaking.

I had him now. If the XIV Gemina's legate was being trailed around on an extended sweetener of this kind, Vespasian would swipe his name off the list of officials before anyone could blink.

“What sort of Gauls were they?”

“Potters,” said Claudia.

I wondered why she had chosen to inform on this client in particular. Germanic rivalry with Gaul? Annoyance at the blatant way her services had been offered for bribery? I decided it was the commercial dishonesty. Claudia being a businesswoman herself, she would naturally hate fraud.

“I won't embarrass you by prying further. Look, we were talking about Munius Lupercus. The war was a long time ago, and I'm struggling to find leads. I'm even faced with the prospect of going across the Rhenus to follow his route as a captive. Does your useful network of contacts extend to the other riverbank? You won't have met the prophetess—”

I should have known better. “Veleda?” cried Claudia Sacrata. “Oh I know her!”

A faint mood of exasperation coloured my tone: “I thought she was incommunicado? I heard she lived above the treetops, and that even the ambassadors who went from Colonia to negotiate terms with her had to send messages via the men in her family.”

“That's right, dear.”

A dreadful thought struck me. “Did you take part in the Colonia embassy?”

“Of course,” murmured Claudia. “This is not Rome, Marcus Didius.” That was certainly true. German women obviously liked to be at the front of things. It was a terrifying concept to a traditional Roman boy. My upbringing was outraged—yet fascinated, too. “I have standing in Colonia, Marcus Didius. I am well known here.”

I could guess what ensured her prominence—the universal status badge: “You are a wealthy woman?”

“My friends have been kind to me.” So she had creamed the tops off some handsome Forum bank accounts. “I helped choose the presents for Veleda; I provided some of them. Then I fancied seeing foreign parts, so I travelled with the ambassadors.” She was as bad as Xanthus. The world must be full of intrepid idiots trying to catch some fatal strain of alien marsh fever.

“Let me guess…” I was grinning despite myself. “The men might have had to follow the rules that preserve Veleda's sanctity;
you
, however, somehow wangled a woman-to-woman chat? I suppose the venerated wench has to pop down from the tower some time—to wash her face, let's say?” This arch description seemed to fit the discreet atmosphere of Claudia's house, where Jupiter, the guardian of strangers, must have his work cut out protecting people desperate to find a polite phrase for asking their way to the latrine.

“I did my best for her.” Claudia Sacrata looked sad. “You can imagine the life the poor girl leads. No conversation; no society. The menfolk who guard her are a feeble lot. She was badly in need of a chin-wag, I can tell you. And before you say anything dear, I made a point of asking about Lupercus. I never forget my boys if I find a chance to do one of them a good turn.”

That angered me. “A man's death in foreign territory is no subject for gossip! Was Lupercus someone you giggled over in the Bructian groves? Did she tell you what she'd done with him?”

“No,” replied Claudia crisply, as if I had impugned all womanhood.

“Not fit for civilised ears? What did she do—hang his head up for a lantern, sprinkle his blood on her private altar, and stick his balls among the mistletoe?” Rome, horrified for once by practices even more barbaric than we could devise ourselves, had outlawed those rites in Gaul and Britain. But that gave no protection to anyone trapped outside our frontiers.

“She had not seen the man,” replied Claudia.

“He never reached the tower?”

“Something happened on the way.”
Something worse than what would have happened had he arrived?

“What was it?”

“Veleda couldn't say.”

“She must have been lying.”

“Veleda had no reason to do that, dear.”

“Evidently a nice girl!” This time I allowed my irony to grate ferociously.

*   *   *

Claudia was looking at me with her mouth turned down. When she spoke again, there was a hint of complaint: “I've given you a great deal of my time, Marcus Didius.”

“I appreciate that. I'm finishing now. Just answer this: have you ever been in contact with Julius Civilis?”

“We met socially in the old days.”

“Where is he now?”

“Sorry, dear. I thought he went back to The Island?”

For the first time, her answer sounded disingenuous. I decided she knew something. I also realised that squeezing Claudia Sacrata once she had clammed up was too daunting for me. She looked like a loose ball of duck down, but her will was formidable. I had also run up against an unshakeable tribal clannishness.

It was hopeless, but I flogged on anyway. “Civilis has disappeared from The Island. He could well have made his way south again, hoping to re-establish his old power base. I heard he was back among the Ubii and Treveri,” I started factually, “and I feel it may be true. His family lived in Colonia.”

“That was when Civilis was attached to the Roman forts.”

“Maybe, but he knows this area. Any suggestions where I can make enquiries?”

“Sorry,” she repeated. I was one Roman who must have ceased to be a nice boy.

*   *   *

We were closing the interview. Claudia's good nature reasserted itself as she asked again if there was anything she could do for me. I told her I had a girlfriend waiting who believed I had just stepped out of doors for a basket of bread rolls.

“She'll be anxious!” Claudia reproved me prudishly. She provided comfort for married men away from home, but wrecking relationships on her doorstep was a proposition that deeply offended her. “You must hurry back at once.” She led me to the door herself—a formal courtesy of the house. No doubt when she was letting out a general, she liked her neighbours to spot the purple. They would be less impressed by today's cheap visitor.

“So how do I find Veleda?” I asked. “All I know is she lives among the Bructeri. They're a far-flung tribe.”

“I'm hopeless at geography. When I went we travelled by river.” She meant the River Lupia.

“And she lived in the forest?” I already knew, but facing it made me freeze. Veleda lived in the area all Rome hated to contemplate, where Roman hopes of controlling the eastern tribes had been obliterated so hideously. “The Teutoburger forest? I wish it was anywhere but there!”

“You're thinking of Varus?” For a mad moment I thought she was about to tell me that Quinctilius Varus and all his three lost legions had been her boys. She was mature, but not
that
cheesy. “The free Germans still boast about Arminius.” They would be doing that for a long time. Arminius was the chieftain who had destroyed Varus; who had liberated Germany from Roman control; and whom Civilis was now openly trying to emulate. “Be careful, Marcus Didius.”

Claudia Sacrata spoke as if I needed a trepanning operation—a hole drilled in my head to relieve the pressure on my brain.

 

XXXVII

“You were out a long time,” grumbled Helena. I told her why. It seemed best, in case one of Claudia Sacrata's wide circle in Colonia later let slip the information. Helena decided I had vanished intentionally. “And have you been drinking?”

“Had to be sociable. I declined the nibbles she usually serves to her Roman boys.”

“How restrained! You're not the salon type—did being sociable work?”

“I heard some lurid gossip. She confirmed that Florius Gracilis is running one step ahead of me in searching for the rebel leaders. He's also deep into selling favours, and disguising it as an autumn hunting trip. The only useful fact I suspect she knows—where I could look for Civilis—was the one thing she deliberately held back.”

“What happened to your persuasiveness?”

“Sweetheart, I have nothing to offer a woman who is used to being coerced by men with top-level public salaries.”

“You're slipping then!” said Helena, more sharply than usual. “By the way, I fetched the bread myself. I realised you'd gone off somewhere working, and I thought you might forget.” She gave me a consoling wholegrain roll. I ate it gloomily. The effect on Claudia Sacrata's spiced wine was negligible. I still felt drunk, in the dire way that afflicts you when you are also in disgrace. “Marcus, I've hired a Ubian waiting-woman to help me when you have to go away. She's a widow—the troubles, you know. She has a daughter the same age as Augustinilla. I'm hoping a little friend who has been brought up more strictly might be a good influence.”

I was not ready to think about going away. “Good idea. I'll pay.”

“Can you afford it?”

“Yes.” She gave me one of her looks. She knew I meant no.

As if to confirm her information two small heads came round the door just then and stared at me. They were as plain-faced as each other, a well-browned bun with eyes like burnt raisins, and a round dollop of pale unleavened dough. They both looked like trouble. The one with the flaxen pigtails demanded of the dark one with the topknot, “Is that him?” She had a faint lisp, a German accent, and about six times the intelligence of my niece.

“Either get out,” I growled, “or come in properly.”

They came in, and stood half a stride away, jostling shoulders and giggling. I felt like a hippopotamus in a seedy menagerie—the one with the reputation for making unpredictable rushes at the bars.

“Are you the uncle who is an enquirer?”

“No, I'm the ogre who eats children. Who are you?”

“My name is Arminia.” I was not in the mood for infants who had been named after heroic enemies of Rome. Arminia and Augustinilla were still egging one another on to see if they could make me charge out of my cage. “What are you enquiring about in Colonia, please?”

“State secret.” They both went off into shrieks.

“Don't listen to him,” decreed Augustinilla. “My mother says he couldn't find his own belly button. Everyone in Rome knows Uncle Marcus is a
complete
fake.”

Looking highly superior they stalked off hand in hand.

“I see they've palled up well,” I commented to Helena. “Clearly there are no ethnic barriers between horrid little girls. So, we now have not one uncontrollable schoolgirl underfoot, but two.”

“Oh Marcus, don't be such a pessimist.”

Things continued to deteriorate. Helena's brother Justinus arrived at our lodging-house. He would have been a welcome visitor, but he came about a week too soon. He was greeted madly by his little dog, who then ran in and peed on my boot.

Before leaving Justinus at the fort, we had arranged for him to follow us to Colonia, bringing with him the pedlar Dubnus, whom I wanted to use as a guide among the Bructeri. He was only supposed to follow after trying to persuade his legate to release some troops to come across the river with me. Arranging the escort had been expected to delay him. I was startled, therefore, when he burst in on our first evening.

“What's this? Your ship must have rowed the whole distance at double stroke to bring you here so soon! Tribune, I hate surprises. They rarely mean good news.”

Justinus looked sheepish. “A letter came for Helena. I thought I ought to bring it here as soon as possible.” He handed it over. Both she and I recognised the Palace parchment and seal. Justinus evidently expected her to break the wax eagerly, but she held it on her knee and looked morose. A similar expression was probably afflicting me. “It caused quite a stir at the fort,” he protested, when he saw her ignoring it.

“Really?” enquired Helena, with her own brand of chilling disdain. “I keep my correspondence private normally.”

“It's from Titus Caesar!”

“I can see that.”

She was putting on her stubborn face. In kindness to her brother I said, “Helena has been advising him about a problem with his aged aunt.” She shot me a look that would have skinned a weasel.