The Iron Hand of Mars (24 page)

A well-laid out, opulent provincial city served by a military-built aqueduct and home to a large colony of retired veteran soldiers, Colonia's close links with Rome had ensured there were difficult decisions during the rebellion. At first the citizens had stayed loyal to the Empire, refusing to join Civilis and placing his son under arrest—though in “honourable” custody, in case matters swung. Only when the situation became desperate were these cautious worthies forced to heed the call from their fellow-tribesmen to acknowledge their German heritage, and even then their alliance with the freedom fighters had its equivocal aspects. They managed to negotiate their own terms with Civilis and Veleda, since by then they were holding more of the Batavian's relations under house arrest, and they were wealthy enough to send the forest priestess the kind of gifts that pacify. Careful juggling helped the town to survive without being sacked by either side. Then, as soon as Petilius Cerialis began to make headway, the good folk hereabouts appealed to him for rescue and allied themselves with Rome again.

They knew how to run their municipal affairs with grace. I felt that it was a safe place to bring Helena.

We arrived fairly early in the day. I dumped my party in a lodging-house near the prefecture, telling Xanthus he was the man in charge. Helena would soon disabuse him.

Refreshed by the river trip, I went out to make enquiries about Claudia Sacrata. I had promised Helena not to dally, but the door I chose to knock on turned out to belong to the general's ladyfriend. For her servant, a male Roman face was enough of a credential, so although I merely asked for an appointment, he whisked me in to see her straight away.

This was a modest town house. Its provincial decorator had tried hard, but had been stuck with painting frescos of what he knew. Jason discovered the Golden Fleece beneath a holly-bush in a thunderstorm. Battle scenes rolled darkly below a frieze that only came to life when crossed by a skein of Rhineland wild geese. Venus, in the local Ubian costume of high-necked dress and wimple, was wooed by Mars in a Celtic felt coat. She looked like a market-trader, and he seemed a shy, rather paunchy chap.

The servant took me to a reception room. I was met by bright colours and gigantic couches with hugely padded cushions where a tired man could flop and forget his troubles. The reds were too earthy, the stripes too broad, the tassels far too fat. The total effect was reassuringly vulgar. The men who came here relied on strong-minded wives for taste, and they probably never noticed interior-design effects. They required somewhere clean and comfortable pervaded by scents of beeswax polish and gently stewing broth, somewhere which held basic recollections of their childhoods, in Italy. It was the kind of house where the bread would be served in roughly chopped hunks that tasted like ambrosia infused with hazelnuts. The music would be dreadful, but people would be laughing and talking so loudly they would not care …

I found Claudia Sacrata seated in a long chair, as if she was expecting visitors. She was no ravishing seductress, but a dumpy, middle-aged woman whose bosom was trussed so firmly it might have acted as a serving tray. Her grooming was careful. She wore a Roman dress in oatmeal and ochre, with fastidiously folded pleats on her shoulders where her stole was pinned with a large Indian ruby brooch that blazed
Present from a Man!
In appearance she reminded me of a slightly old-fashioned, good-hearted aunt tricked out to make a show in front of the neighbours at a Floralia parade.

“Come in, dear. What can I do for you?” The question could have been simple politeness … or a commercial bid.

I played everything straight. “My name is Marcus Didius Falco; I am a government agent. I should be grateful if you would answer a few questions.”

“Certainly.” Of course, it didn't guarantee she would answer them truthfully.

“Thank you. I hope you don't mind if I start with you? You are Claudia Sacrata, and you keep a welcoming house. Do you live with your mother?” We both understood this euphemistic phrase.

“My sister,” she corrected. It was the same flimsy veil of respectability, though I noticed no chaperone ever appeared at our interview.

I plunged straight in: “I believe you once shared the confidence of His Excellency Cerialis?”

“That's right, dear.” She was the type who liked to catch people out by admitting the unthinkable. Her shrewd eyes watched me while she tried to deduce what I wanted.

“I need to acquire some sensitive information, and it's difficult finding people I can trust.”

“Did my general send you?”

“No. This is nothing to do with him.”

The atmosphere changed. She knew I was investigating someone; if it had been His Excellency, she had intended to slap me down. Now she saw her most notable client was in the clear; her tone became proprietary. “I don't mind talking about Cerialis.” She gestured me to a couch. “Make yourself more at home…” Home was never like this.

She rang a bell for a servant, a nippy lad who seemed to have answered quite a few bells in his time. After surveying me coyly, she gushed, “A hot-spiced-wine man, I should say!” Outside my own home I hate the stuff. To encourage good relations, I agreed to be a man who drank hot spiced wine.

It was a rich liquor, served in magnificent cups, with the spices rather overdone. A consoling warmth flooded my stomach, then seeped into my nervous system making me feel happy and safe, even when Claudia Sacrata cooed “Tell me all about it!,” which was supposed to be my line.

“No, you tell me,” I smiled, implying that women who knew what they were doing had tried to undermine me before. “We were discussing Petilius Cerialis.”

“A very pleasant gentleman.”

“Bit of a reputation as a hothead?”

“In what way?” she simpered.

“The military way, for instance.”

“Why do you think that?”

This was a silly dance. However, I deduced that if I wanted information, talking about her precious Cerialis was the price I had to pay. “I've been reading about his battle at Augusta Treverorum, for one thing.” I was sipping my hefty winecup as demurely as I could. If Cerialis wore his epaulettes in the usual style, he had bored everybody silly with the story of his big fight.

Claudia Sacrata posed and considered. “People did say at the time that he made mistakes.”

“Well, you can look at it two ways,” I conceded, playing the friendly type. There was, in fact, only one way
I
could look at it. Petilius Cerialis had stupidly allowed his opponents to concentrate in large numbers while he had been awaiting reinforcements. That had been dangerous enough. His famous engagement was a shambles, too. Cerialis had built his camp on the opposite bank of the river from the town. The enemy arrived very early in the morning, crept up from several directions, and burst into the camp, throwing all into confusion.

“I understood,” Claudia defended him with solid loyalty, “that it was only the general's brave action that saved the situation.” So that was his story.

“Undoubtedly.” My work demands a shameless ability to lie. “Cerialis rushed from his bed without body armour, to discover that his camp was in turmoil, his cavalry were fleeing, and the bridgehead had been taken. He grabbed the fugitives, turned them round, retook the bridge with great personal courage, then forced his way into the Roman camp and rallied his men. He salvaged everything and finished the day by destroying the enemy's headquarters instead of losing his own.”

Claudia Sacrata wagged her finger. “So why are you sceptical?”

Because the other assessment was that our troops had been led pathetically; the enemy should never have been able to get so close undetected, the camp had been inadequately guarded, the sentries were asleep, and their commander had absented himself. Only the fact that the tribesmen had been intent on grabbing plunder had averted complete disaster from our dashing general.

I restrained my bitterness. “Why was the general not sleeping in the camp that night?”

The lady responded calmly. “That I can't say.”

“Did you know him at that point?”

“I met him later.” So even before their intrigue started, he had preferred the comforts of a private house.

“May I ask how your friendship came about?”

“Oh, he visited Colonia Agrippinensium.”

“Romantic story?” I grinned.

“Real life, dear.” I guessed she regarded selling sexual activity as no different from selling eggs.

“Tell me?”

“Why not? The general came to thank me for my part in undermining the enemy.”

“What had you done?” I imagined some brothel intrigue.

“Our city was looking for a way to re-establish its ties with Rome. The town councillors offered to hand over the wife and sister of Civilis, plus the daughter of one of the other chiefs, who had been kept here as securities. Then we tried something more useful. Civilis, still confident, was placing his hopes in his best forces, warriors from among the Chauci and Frisii, encamped not far from here. The men of our town invited them to a feast and plied them with lavish food and drink. Once they were all completely stupefied, they locked the doors and set fire to the hall.”

I tried not to display too much shock. “A friendly Germanic custom?”

“It's not unknown.” The most chilling part was her matter-of-fact tone.

“So when Civilis learned that his crack troops had been burned alive, he fled north, and Petilius Cerialis rode gratefully into Colonia … But what was your part, Claudia?”

“I provided the food and drink for the feast.”

I put down my winecup.

“Claudia Sacrata, far be it from me to pry, but can you tell me something—” This oddly comfortable yet insensitive woman was upsetting me. I studiously changed the subject. “What's the true story about losing the general's flagship?”

She smiled and said nothing.

It had been another stupid incident. I told her what I already knew from my research. After an unsuccessful period of campaigning in northern Europe, where Civilis and the Batavians had engaged him in guerilla warfare around the marshes of their homeland and had seemed set to fend off Rome indefinitely, Petilius Cerialis had taken a breather (his favourite kind of action) and gone to inspect some new winter quarters at Novaesium and Bonna, intending to return north with a much-needed naval flotilla. Yet again discipline was poor; yet again his pickets were careless. One dark night, the Germans crept in, slashed the guy ropes, and wreaked havoc while our men were fumbling under their collapsed tents and running about the camp half dressed and terrified. They had no one to rally them, because, of course, yet again Cerialis had slipped off elsewhere.

“Then the enemy towed off the flagship, Julius Civilis believing the general to be aboard.”

“His mistake!” Claudia agreed purringly.

“Sleeping out of camp again?” I tried not to sound critical.

“Evidently.”

“With you, as people said?” I was having great trouble imagining this.

“You really can't expect me to answer that.”

“I see.” With her.

“You said your enquiries had nothing to do with Petilius, so why all these questions about past events?” I was pushing matters further than she liked now.

“I'm a sucker for lively background.” I was hoping my interest in Petilius might appear to threaten him, so that she would try to deflect me with the information I really wanted. But she was tougher than she seemed. Any impression of foolishness hid a shrewd business sense. “What happened to the flagship in the end?”

“At daybreak the rebels all sailed away in the Roman ships. They towed the flagship into their own territory as a present for their priestess.”

“Veleda!” I let out a low whistle. “So if Cerialis was with you that night, you saved his life.”

“Yes,” she agreed proudly.

“If he had been aboard—” As he should have been. “—his fate would have been gruesome. The last Roman officer the rebels sent to Veleda has never been heard of since.”

“Terrible!” she agreed, with conventional sympathy.

“That's my mission,” I told her. “He was a legionary legate. I have to find out for the Emperor and his family what unkind fate befell him. I doubt you would ever have met this one; he was stationed at Vetera, a long distance from here—”

“Munius Lupercus?” She sounded surprised. “Oh you're wrong there, dear,” declared the imperturbable Claudia. “I knew Munius
very
well.”

 

XXXVI

I sighed inwardly, I tried to shift position on the cushions beneath me, but they gripped me with embarrassing suction. When Claudia Sacrata told a man to make himself comfortable, she didn't intend him to prise himself free without the aid of a building-yard fulcrum.

I had brought myself to the home of a woman who knew everyone. Names were dropped here like water drips around a fountain. Gossip was the common language. I was sitting, on an aching bottom, at the centre of a social spider's web which might be anchored to any point in Europe.

“You knew Lupercus?” I croaked. I hate to be repetitive, but I was in no condition for more sinuous oratory.

“Such a nice man. Very genuine. Very generous.”

“I'm sure! You have a wide circle of acquaintances.”

“Oh yes. Most of the boys from Rome pass through here at some time. I am famous,” stated Claudia complacently, “for my hospitality.”

That was one word for it.

“A woman of influence!” I threw my next dice with a casual air. “How are you on the incumbent of the legio Fourteenth Gemina?”

She seemed equal to anything. “Would that be Priscus? Or the new one, Gracilis?” Apparently both had hung up their armour on her cloak-peg.

“The new man.”

“I've met him once or twice.”