The Iron Hand of Mars (26 page)

“Ah…” Justinus could detect an atmosphere. He had the tact to believe my bitter joke. “I'd better be off now, Marcus Didius. I need a bathe. We can talk properly another time. I'm staying at the Rhenus fleet fort.”

“Did you manage to get me an escort?”

“You've been assigned a centurion and twenty men. Rather inexperienced, I'm afraid, but it was the best I could do. I told my legate you were official, in fact I invited him to meet you, but if you're undercover for the Palace he prefers to stand aloof and let you get on with it.”

I preferred to stand aloof from this mission myself. “Old-fashioned, eh?”

“Forays across into the east are not encouraged nowadays.” He meant Rome was in enough trouble in the territory it held, without stirring up the eastern tribes.

“Suits me. I hate formalities. Thank him. I'm grateful for any support. Did you bring the pedlar too?”

“Yes. I warn you, though, he's protesting volubly.”

“Don't worry. I came across Gaul with a chattering barber. I can manage anything after that.”

Justinus kissed his sister and disappeared with alacrity.

*   *   *

We sat apart in silence. In the circumstances I thought it was her turn to speak. Helena generally ignored whatever I thought.

After a moment I muttered, “I'd kiss you too, but it seems inappropriate with a letter from the Emperor's son lying in your lap.” She made no answer. I wished she would jump up and burn the thing. I remonstrated steadily: “Helena, you had better open that document.” Refusing would make the tension far worse, so she slowly broke the seal. “Shall I go out while you read it?”

“No.”

*   *   *

She was a fast reader. Besides, for a love letter it was foolishly brief. She read with an expressionless face, then rerolled it tightly, gripping the scroll in her clenched fist.

“That was quick.”

“More like an order for new boots,” she agreed.

“He's known as a poor public speaker, but a man in his position ought to be able to prime a jobbing poet to scribble a few hexameters to salute a lady … I would.”

“You,” murmured Helena, so quietly it scared me witless, “would write the hexameters yourself.”

“For you I would.”

She was very still. There was nothing I could do for her.

“It would take me a few thousand lines,” I warbled on miserably. “You might have to wait a month or two while I polished them properly. If
I
was asking you to come home to me, I'd want to tell you everything…” I stopped talking. If Titus had offered her the Empire, Helena Justina would be needing to think. She was a cautious girl.

I was trying to convince myself that whatever Titus had to say, it must so far be unofficial. If he was making any serious proposition, their two fathers would be negotiating. Even among emperors—
especially
among emperors—there are ways these things have to be done.

“Don't worry.” Helena looked up abruptly. It was always the same. Whenever I had reason to be worried about her, she tried to quash it by worrying over me. “Nothing is going to happen, I promise you.”

“Has the great man asked his question?”

“Marcus, as soon as I reply—”

“Don't,” I said.

“What?”

“Don't reply yet.”

At least if any disaster happened to me, Titus Caesar would look after her. She would never lack anything. And the Empire's gain would be immense. A Caesar who reigned in partnership with Helena Justina might work incomparable deeds. Titus knew that. So did I.

I ought to set her free. Some people might say that once I reached Germania Libera I had a real duty to vanish in the woods. In the whimsical moments when I cared about Rome, I even thought that myself.

*   *   *

She was strange. Instead of demanding what I meant, she rose, came across to me, and then sat in silence beside me, holding my hand. Her eyes brimmed with tears she was too stubborn to shed.

She knew, of course. I wanted her myself. Even while I was crossing the Styx in Hades, I would be squabbling with the ferryman and trying to fight my way back off the boat to return to Helena. I only wanted to safeguard her future in case I would not be there.

She knew the rest, too. Going across the river would be stupidly dangerous. History was against me. The free tribes were implacable enemies of everything Roman. And I knew from Britain how the Celts treated their enemies. If I was captured I could expect to be denied diplomatic immunity. My skull would be speared up in a niche outside a temple. What happened to the rest of me before they swiped my head off was likely to be more degrading and more painful than I could bear to contemplate. I did not ask how much Helena knew of all this, but she was well read.

When I fell for Helena Justina, I had vowed I would never expose myself to serious risk again. There had been plenty of tricky exploits in my past, most of which I would never even hint at to her. But a man grows older. He learns that other things matter. She could guess I had a horrific career behind me, but she believed that telling her I loved her meant my daredevil days were over. Nobody could blame the girl; I had made the same assumption myself.

Now I looked like one of those madmen for whom danger is an addiction. Helena's plight seemed as bleak as if she had shackled herself to a drunkard or a fornicator. She must have told herself everything would change under her influence, but now she saw it never could … Still, I knew I was different. This was just one last attempt to acquire a decent bounty from the Emperor, all so that I could win her.

One last throw … I suppose all madmen tell themselves that.

“Cheer up,” she said. Her manner was brisk. “Come along, Marcus. Let's give Claudia Sacrata another scandal for her portfolio. How about introducing your pet senator's daughter to the general's lady-love?”

 

XXXVIII

There was a scarlet cloak on the hall peg. Helena and I exchanged a glance, trying not to giggle. Claudia Sacrata came out to us. Tonight she had on a crooked garland and a dress in tones of melon seed and grape skin. A heavy hand with the mercuric paint had produced the bright-eyed effect which women think men regard as youthfulness (as many men do). Pan-pipes whootled behind her, cut off abruptly by a closing door—closed by someone else. Claudia led us to a different room. When she left us again for a moment, Helena muttered, “Looks as if we may have caught a senior officer with his breastplate hooks undone.”

“Make the most of the occasion. I reckon we won't be staying long.”

“Where's she gone? Has she nipped back to give him a Greek novel to read while she deals with us?”

“He may be skittering out through the garden gate with only one greave on his shins … Have I ever told you my friend Petronius says every time he raids a brothel he discovers the aedile who issues brothel licences hiding in a blanket chest? Big-name prigs are incorrigible.”

“I expect,” said Helena Justina soberly, “the strains of office necessitate the therapy.”

She had been married to an aedile once. I hoped he had spent all his free time in blanket boxes, and not with her.

*   *   *

Claudia Sacrata returned.

“I've brought someone who's dying to meet you…” I introduced my aristocratic escort. Whatever masculine ranks Claudia had entertained, it must be the first and perhaps the only time a senator's daughter would sit in her house. For this trophy she would have let us interrupt even her general.

Helena had dressed carefully, bearing in mind that her white dress with its little flowerbud sprigs, the shading of her cheeks, the fringe of her stole, her hooped seed-pearl earrings, and the amber necklace I had given her would be all the rage in Ubian society for the next ten years.

“What a lovely girl, Marcus Didius!” cried Claudia, mentally making fashion notes. Helena smiled graciously. That smile was also going to feature in scores of Colonia dining-rooms.

“I'm glad you approve of her.” This glib retort earned me a bruising from the lovely girl's attractive beaded shoe. “She has her wild side, but I'm slowly taming her … Don't judge the manners in Rome by this one's impetuous behaviour. The girls there are all mumbling violets who have to ask mother's permission for
everything
.”

“You have your hands full!” Claudia confided to her ladyship, with a meaningful look at me.

“We all make mistakes,” agreed Helena. They both studied the object of their scorn. For escorting Helena into Colonia I too had dressed carefully: tunic, belt, boots, boot linings, cloak, saucy grin—the same scruffy rig as usual.

Our hostess was obviously wondering how a smart young woman like Helena could have let herself fall down so badly. Anyone could see she was highly refined (a prime candidate for disgracing herself on a portico), yet strongly sensible (and therefore more likely to give me a sturdy kick through the nearest victory arch). “Are you married, Helena?” Claudia explored. She entertained no possibility that Helena Justina might be married to me.

“I was.”

“Dare one ask…?”

“We divorced. It's a popular hobby in Rome,” Helena said in a light tone. Then she changed her mind and added frankly, “My husband's dead.”

“Oh dear. How did that happen?”

“I never heard the full details. Marcus knows.”

I was angry at the interrogation. Helena handled it calmly and proudly, in her usual public style, but privately the subject always upset her. I told Claudia Sacrata in a cold voice, “There was a political scandal. He committed suicide.”

My tone must have clearly stated that I wanted the matter dropped. Claudia's gaze sharpened thrillingly, as if she was going to demand, “
Sword or poison?
,” but then she turned to Helena. “He looks after you anyway.” Helena lifted her eyebrows, which were fined to an elegant crescent and almost certainly coloured, though their enhancement was delicate. Claudia Sacrata hissed, “He means to spear me to the ceiling if I probe!”

Helena gave a demonstration of how a well-bred woman should simply ignore unpleasantness. “Claudia Sacrata, I understand you are a pillar of Ubian society? Marcus Didius tells me you are his one hope of tracing Civilis.”

“Afraid I couldn't help him, dear.” In front of Helena, Claudia Sacrata now regretted that. She wanted to be seen as a public benefactor. “The person who would have known was his sister's son, Julius Briganticus. He loathed his uncle and always stayed loyal to Rome, but through family information he could always be relied on to know where Civilis was.”

“Can Falco get in touch with him?”

“He was killed, campaigning with Cerialis in the north.”

“What about the rest of the family?” Helena persisted.

Claudia Sacrata had obviously taken to her. Details that had been denied to me gushed out. “Oh, Civilis had a mob of relations—his wife, several sisters, a daughter, a son, a whole clutch of nephews…” I was starting to feel this Civilis must be a sympathetic character. The Batavian's family sounded as terrible as mine: too many women, and the men at each other's throats. “They won't talk to you,” Claudia continued. That sounded like my relations, too. “Most were fierce proponents of the free Gallic Empire. Civilis actually had his wife and sisters with him behind the lines on occasions, and all his officers' families—the way warriors did in the old days.”

“With a picnic?” I pondered facetiously.

“To encourage them in battle, dear.”

“And discourage slacking!” snapped Helena. I could imagine her parked on a wagon at the rear of the army, shouting harangues that would terrify the enemy and egg on her own incompetent menfolk. “When they aren't being spear fodder, Claudia, don't they live around here?”

“They did. Civilis and other leaders even met in their houses to plot. That was way back though, when Colonia wanted nothing to do with his revolt. None of his clan show their faces now. There's too much bitterness. Civilis had the Ubians raided by neighbouring tribes; his friends from the Treveri besieged Colonia; and he was known to be in a strong mind to sack and plunder us.”

“So where would he go?” Helena pondered. “If he wanted to hide up in this area which he knows so well, but avoid the Ubii, who would turn him straight over to Rome?”

“I don't know … Maybe among the Lingones, or more likely the Treveri. The Lingon leader—” Claudia chortled suddenly. “That's a funny story. His name is Julius Sabinus, and he was a great boaster, though completely bogus. He used to claim that his great-grandmother had been a beauty who seduced Julius Caesar.”

I muttered, “Nothing to boast about!”

“Pardon, dear?”

“It was easily done.”

“Ooh Marcus Didius! Anyway, Sabinus was full of pretentions, but Helena, as soon as Cerialis came, he panicked. He set fire to his farmhouse to make it look as if he had committed suicide, and then slithered out. His wife Eponnina is hiding him. Everyone knows, but we don't mention it. No one can believe he won't come crawling out with a red face and straw in his trousers. Still, the way things are going, he could be battened up for years.” It was a good story—and it gave me an interesting clue to the anxieties that might also be besetting my quarry, Civilis. “Anyway, dears, Civilis won't have any truck with such a coward. He's more likely to break bread with Classicus.”

“Who's that?” asked Helena.

“A leader of the Treveri. The one who made Colonia join the rebels temporarily. He executed some of the Roman tribunes at Moguntiacum, too, for refusing to swear allegiance to the German alliance.”

“Young men you knew?”

“One or two.” As always Claudia said it impassively, but perhaps she did care. She looked older tonight, and tired of gaiety.