The legatus nodded slowly, his lips tightly compressed.
‘And I may well never be able to thank you properly. But nevertheless, you have my thanks, for what they’re worth. Your presence will be of more value to me than you might suspect, given the sheer loneliness of my position. At least while Flaccus was alive I had someone to blame for this terrible mess. Mind you …’ he smiled ruefully, ‘if I think this is tough, I’d imagine the position of our spy in the Batavian camp is every bit as nerve-wracking.’
Tigernum, Gallia Belgica, January AD 70
‘And I, Claudius Labeo, have had enough of burning out innocent men’s farms.’
The big Tungrian centurion loomed over Labeo, who remained where he was, sprawled in a chair that in happier times would have been occupied by the master of the villa that had become his ragtag force’s temporary encampment. The smell of cooking was wafting into the room through its open shutters, as the small army’s men busied themselves cooking freshly butchered meat, their horseplay audible through the farm’s windows as they enjoyed the unaccustomed luxury of a river to bathe in and anticipated the hot food that would soon be filling their bellies. The Batavi nobleman shrugged at his officer with an unconcerned expression.
‘And you have a better idea, do you? Even with the cohorts so badly reduced in strength I doubt that we could match them on a battlefield, not without some quirk of the landscape to help us. What would you have me do, march my men east and seek them out?’
The Tungrian shook his head brusquely, putting a hand to the scabbard at his side and tapping it meaningfully.
‘Of course not. But there is a way that we could end this war in a single bold act, and bring honour back to our blades.’
Labeo shook his head, spreading his hands in question.
‘Have we not discussed this before? How many times will you chew on this bone before you realise that what you propose is certain suicide?’
The big man turned away with a headshake, his voice acid with frustration.
‘So you say. But then you, Claudius Labeo, are hardly the most aggressively minded of your people, if indeed you are a true son of the Batavi. Perhaps some Roman crept into your mother’s bed while your father was serving in a distant land, and gave her a Roman son.’ He looked back at Labeo with a tight smile, shaking his head again at the other man’s apparent indifference to the grave insult. ‘See? Even when I question your parentage you simply look back at me with nothing more in your face than calculation of what it is that I want. Were Kivilaz in that chair I would be looking down the length of his sword, whereas you …’
Labeo threw his head back and laughed.
‘I’m supposed to air my iron because you seek to provoke me on a whim? I have better things to occupy my mind than responding to your predictable and stale jibes. Men have been accusing me of being too careful in my thinking to be a real son of my tribe for so long that I’ve long since learned to ignore them and spend my time on bigger and better matters. Such as how we can lure Kivilaz onto favourable ground for an ambush, or where we should attack next to do the maximum possible damage to his ability to wage war – not on the wild schemes that you keep pushing me to support. You would have me throw my army at Kivilaz’s camp in the hope of catching him unawares, and by ending his life, end the war in a day, where in reality we could not hope to approach within ten miles without being detected by his scouts. Your plan, as I have told you a hundred times, is doomed to fail, and I will not throw my men away to satisfy your urge to do something, even if that act of defiance would almost certainly end both our struggle and our lives.’
The Tungrian stared at him for a moment.
‘Your army? I still struggle to see how it is that you feel entitled to claim the command of men from half a dozen tribes. Perhaps they might prefer to make their own decision as to the best way to fight this war?’
Labeo got slowly to his feet, his gaze locked on the Tungrian.
‘Rome, Centurion. That’s who gave me this command and restored me to the rank of prefect. Dillius Vocula recognised a leader in me, when I told him what I might achieve for him. He saw a man he knew could unite the soldiers of the allied tribes who had flocked to Rome’s eagles in disdain for their tribes’ rebellion against the greatest power in the world.’ He walked slowly forward, his pace deliberate, until he was toe to toe with the taller man. ‘Clearly he saw something in me that was lacking from any other man in this army of disaffection. Lacking, it has to be said, in you, Centurion.’ He raised a hand to forestall the big man’s outburst. ‘I know, that’s verging on an insult that will have your iron leaping from its scabbard. But think. If you kill me, as you probably could, you will be hunted down like a dog once Rome has control of this land once more, hunted down and executed out of hand for the crime of murdering your superior officer. Rome hates insubordination, but it reserves a special punishment for men who raise their hands in mutiny. And besides, I have a better use for that indignation.’
The Tungrian looked down at him.
‘What better use?’
‘You seem fixated on trying to kill Kivilaz. You hope to catch him unawares, and be the man who ends this war in a heartbeat, seeking glory and honour for your people and yourself. And why not? Perhaps your wild scheme might work. The odds are certainly not so long that a few men might be wagered to make such an attempt.’
The big man gaped at him.
‘But …’
‘But I have refused every request you have made for such an act of desperation?’ Labeo shrugged. ‘I have. But what I have refused, in point of fact, is your desire for the army to seek such a knock-out punch, for fear that it will be our chin that takes the punch. When it comes to you personally I have no such qualms. So yes, why not? Take any of your own century who wish to accompany you in this wild cast of the dice and ride east. Find the enemy camp and use whatever ruse or stratagem you think appropriate to worm your way close to my old colleague Kivilaz, then strike with all your venom. If you kill him then you will indeed put your sword into the Batavi’s heart, and make a hero of yourself for all time, whereas if you fail …’ he shrugged, ‘you will at least die with some measure of honour.’
The Tungrian’s eyes narrowed.
‘You want to rid yourself of my threat to your leadership.’
Labeo laughed in his face.
‘Your threat to my leadership? You keep on thinking that way. Use that certainty as to your own superiority to fire your determination to prove me wrong. And for me, sending a small force of trained killers led by a wild animal like you after my old adversary Kiv represents a gamble that might just work. After all, Centurion, and unlike you, I am not a man to rest on his pride. If you think you can kill the man who leads the tribe then you go ahead and give it your best effort, and I’ll sacrifice to Magusanus himself for you to succeed. And if you do succeed, I’ll happily say what a great man you were in your funeral oration. Or does the realisation that seeking Kiv’s head is likely to cost you your own dull the shine on your blade?’
Batavodurum, January AD 70
‘Well now, let’s see who we have before us.’
Draco eased himself into his accustomed chair in the Batavi council’s chamber, gesturing to the two men standing on the other side of the table.
‘Relax, brothers, you have been invited to a discussion of a problem the tribe faces, not hauled before the council for judgement.’
Both men stared back at him with the offended air of men who felt themselves traduced by the very fact of their having been asked to attend the meeting, glancing nervously at the men standing to either side of them with blank expressions.
‘So …’ He paused for a long moment. ‘You know, I imagine, what it is that I wish to discuss with you all?’
‘Yes.’
The wealthier of the two men nodded, hard-faced. A successful merchant, who specialised in trade with Britannia and Rome, buying tribal jewellery from the land beyond the imperial frontier and sellin
g on to Roman gentlemen at enormous mark-ups, he had been accompanied to the chamber by a pair of bodyguards, but the militiamen guarding the room had turned them away with blank faces, admitting only their master.
‘You believe there is a spy in the city and you have been entrusted by Kivilaz with the job of finding him.’
‘Indeed I do, and yes, I have been entrusted with the critical task of uncovering this treachery.’
Having responded, Draco waited in silence, staring unblinkingly at him. When the pause had stretched beyond the point of discomfort it was the other man who broke it.
‘And you seriously believe that this spy could be me, of all people?’
The older man shrugged.
‘It’s possible. Why else would I have asked you to come here and discuss the matter?’
‘But that’s ludicrous! I realise that you have to be thorough, Draco, but I have two sons with the cohorts! Why in Hercules’s name would I betray them to the enemy?’
Draco shook his head.
‘They weren’t serving with the cohorts when whoever it was that betrayed our battle plans to the Romans inflicted the grievous loss of half their strength in a single night on the tribe, were they? They were too young to be serving, and they only joined the army after that disaster, when we were forced to ask for volunteers from those too old and too young to serve in the usual course of matters. So at the time that whoever it was sold our plans to the enemy, the defence you’ve raised simply wasn’t the case. And we don’t worship Hercules now that we’re free of Rome’s control, we serve Magusanus.’
He stared at the trader for a moment.
‘Whoever it was that betrayed the tribe is likely to have a strong interest in Roman victory over us. An interest in the renewal of the status quo. An interest in the resumption of trading between the Batavi and Rome, and with the Britons for that matter. As do you. And whoever it was that betrayed the tribe would appear to have lost a slave. We know that because our spies in their camp reported that the message warning Legatus Vocula, telling him that they were about to be attacked unexpectedly and out of the night, was delivered by a man who appeared to be a freed slave.’
The other man stared back at him in bemusement.
‘How could they know that?’
‘Deduction. For a start he was dressed like a slave, a simple tunic, rough boots and a cloak that had seen many better days. And for another thing, his purse was heavy, holding enough coin to enable him to start a new life, perhaps, as the reward for his delivering the traitor’s message to his Roman friends. It looks to me as if the traitor in question decided to take the loss of a valuable asset in order to get a warning to the Romans that they were about to be attacked, as the price of saving them from almost certain defeat. And was therefore someone clearly not short of money.’
The merchant shook his head in bafflement.
‘The way I’ve heard it, our men lost because they were attacked unexpectedly as a result of the very worst luck possible.’
Draco nodded.
‘True. But if the legions had not been warned they would have been cooped up in their camp when our men attacked. It would have been a fight that ended before it really began. Instead of which they had time to come out and form a line, and had sufficient warning to put up enough of a fight that the most appalling mischance had the time to come to pass. Tell me, you’ve lost a slave recently, haven’t you?’
‘Yes, but he simply vanished one night! I have no idea—’
‘Thank you. I just wanted to confirm the facts. You have indeed lost a slave in the last few weeks. As have you …’ he switched the focus of his attention to the other man, an ex-magistrate who had stared at him with barely disguised disgust all the while he had been questioning the merchant. ‘Have you lost a man recently as well?’
The ex-official stared back at him with evident anger.
‘You have the nerve to accuse me, a magistrate of the tribe—’
‘Ex-magistrate.’
‘What?’
‘You were a magistrate. An official whose primary duty was not to the tribe, in reality, but to Rome. You were voted into your position by the men of the Batavi, sure enough, but you owed your loyalty to the empire, not to us.’
The other man shook his head in angry bafflement.
‘You know as well as I do, Draco, that I am a faithful servant of the Julian families. The same families with whom you have made common cause in your service of Prince Kivilaz. As magistrate I did the bidding of the oldest and most influ—’
‘Prefect.’
‘What?’
‘My rank, both former and current, is that of prefect. I have been asked to fulfil the role of safeguarding Batavodurum both from open attack by some renegade like Claudius Labeo and his fellow scum and from subversion from within. Which is what I’m investigating at the moment. And so I will repeat my question. Have you lost a man recently?’
The other man stared back in sullen silence for a moment before answering.
‘No. None of my men has gone missing.’
‘Thank you. And that wasn’t so hard, was it? Just a statement of the facts. To which I could add that your friend here’s man went missing around the time of the defeat at Gelduba, which is the reason for this investigation. Didn’t he?’
He turned back to the merchant, who held his hands wide in mystification.
‘Yes. Although how you would be aware of such a small matter is beyond me. Prefect.’
The two men stared at each other in silence for a moment in a battle of wills.
‘These things tend to be noticed. Especially when they’re not reported at the time they happen.’
The merchant bridled.
‘What about you, Prefect? Hasn’t a slave left your household recently?’
Draco smiled at the challenge with such apparent good humour that the ex-magistrate’s face creased into an involuntary frown.
‘Why yes, now you mention it, that’s completely true. I did free one of my men before Yule, and what’s more I gave him a purse with which to buy the woman he loves from her mistress. The last that we heard of them they were crossing the river to go back to the tribe from which his father was enslaved as a boy. At least a dozen of his comrades will vouch for that, whereas nobody seems to know where the man you lost went. So now that you’ve tried to paint me with the same tar that’s plastered all over the pair of you, we’ll continue. Do neither of you have anything to say?’
The trader was the first to answer, spitting out the words.
‘I have nothing more to say to you, Draco. This is a transparent attempt to make me look like the guilty party in a matter of which I have no knowledge!’
The veteran prefect shrugged dispassionately.
‘The tribe must have justice for the men you betrayed.’
‘The men I betrayed? I haven’t betrayed …’
His protests died away as Draco raised an item for him to look at, a wooden writing tablet, a presentiment of doom furrowing his brow.
‘Why are you showing me one of my writing tablets?’
Draco stared at him questioningly.
‘So you agree that this is yours?’
‘One of mine, of course. My name is engraved on the outside, and those hinges are silver. I’d know it anywhere.’
He stared in bemusement as the veteran opened the case to reveal that the shallow wooden boxes that usually held the wax were empty.
‘It’s an old trick. The message is written on the tablet’s frame and then covered in wax on which an innocuous message is scribed. When I found this the wax had already been removed.’ He raised the tablet and read aloud. ‘To the legatus augusti commanding Roman forces at Gelduba. The army of the Batavi tribe is approaching your camp and will attack without warning before dawn. The army is composed of eight cohorts of part-mounted infantry and one cohort of guard cavalry. In providing you with this warning I have discharged my debt to Rome in full.’
He looked at th
e other man while the magistrate stared at his fellow accused in horror.
‘Your debt to Rome, eh?’
‘But that isn’t mine!’
Draco raised an amused eyebrow.
‘And yet a moment ago it was. How very strange.’
‘It’s a fake, planted to make me appear guilty!’
‘I see. Well whoever planted it must have been very keen to make you seem guilty because I found it in the wreckage of the Roman camp when I rode south with the cohorts the second time they attacked Gelduba, with a witness of impeccable honour to vouch for the discovery. Before they put the Roman encampment to the torch I had a good root through the buildings, sifting through what remained after they had left the camp to march north and relieve the siege of the Old Camp. And I found this discarded in their headquarters. The Romans may well have considered your debt paid, but it doesn’t seem as if they had very much concern for your safety, does it?’
‘But I didn’t—’
‘Write this? I think you did. Take a closer look.’
He held out the tablet for the merchant to see.
‘I have compared it with your writing from official tax documentation. The same hand clearly wrote both, the similarities are striking even if you have tried to disguise your style. No, I’m afraid it’s somewhat too obvious even to a simple soldier for me to come to any other conclusion than that you’ve been playing a quiet and clever game all these years. What was the debt that you were repaying to our would-be masters, I wonder? Some kind of blackmail? Did they know things about you that you’d rather not be known among the men of the tribe? Perhaps someone with close links to Rome recruited you to their cause in just such a way …’ He turned to look at the magistrate. ‘Someone in a position of power, with the ability and the resources to pry open matters you might prefer to have left closed?’
The former official jabbed a finger at him, his face white with fear and anger.
‘I have no knowledge of any of this, Draco! My duty was always to the tribe first and to Rome second, and for as long as I served I always kept it that way! You can ask Prince Kivilaz, he’ll tell you—’
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