Suddenly realising that he had been too busy admiring her to take in what she had been saying, he cleared his throat. ‘What was his name?’
Flavia looked up from her handkerchief. ‘I told you; Statilius Capella.’
‘Oh yes, of course; and he’s your husband?’
‘No, I’m his mistress; haven’t you listened to anything?’ Flavia frowned. ‘His wife is back in Sabratha in the province of Africa; he never takes her on his business trips, he finds that my charms work much better on his clients.’
Vespasian could well believe it; they had certainly worked on him and, dizzy with desire inflamed by her sensual scent and ripe body, it was as much as he could do to keep his hands clamped on the arms of his chair and concentrate on what she was saying. ‘And what was his business again?’
Flavia looked at him exasperated. ‘You’ve just been sitting there staring at my breasts, haven’t you, because you’ve evidently not heard a word I’ve said.’
Vespasian opened his mouth to deny the accusation – he had been staring at more than just her breasts – but thought better of it. ‘I’m sorry if you think that I’ve been inattentive, I’m a busy man,’ he blustered, his eyes involuntarily resting again for a moment on the magnificent swell of that part of Flavia’s anatomy.
‘Not too busy to sit and stare at a woman’s body rather than listen to what she has to say. He’s a wild-beast master; he procures animals for the circuses in Sabratha and Lepcis Magna. He was making a trip out into the desert to try and get some camels; they don’t put up much of a fight but they look funny and make people laugh. We don’t have them in the province of Africa but there’s a tribe here that does.’
‘The Marmaridae.’
‘Yes, that sounds right, the Marmaridae,’ Flavia agreed, pleased to have his full attention finally.
‘So your er… man has gone to try and buy camels off a tribe that doesn’t acknowledge Rome’s hegemony in the area because we’ve never been able to defeat them in battle as they’re nomadic and almost impossible to find?’
‘Yes, and he should have been back five days ago,’ Flavia added, quivering her bottom lip.
Vespasian bit his, trying to banish thoughts of where that lip might go. ‘You should hope that he hasn’t made contact with them.’
Flavia looked at him in alarm. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Because they’re notorious slavers; they take whomever they can find and sell them, hundreds of miles away in the south, to the Garamantes, who apparently have massive irrigation works that enable them to grow crops down there; it’s very labour intensive.’
Flavia burst into fresh tears.
Vespasian fought to resist the urge to comfort her, knowing that once he touched that body he would be lost. ‘I’m sorry, Flavia, but it’s the truth. He was absolutely mad to go out there. How many men did he have with him?’
‘I don’t know for sure, at least ten, I think.’
‘Ten? That’s preposterous; there are thousands of Marmaridae. Let’s pray that he hasn’t found them and that his water hasn’t run out yet; how much did he take?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, if he doesn’t turn up in a couple of days then I’m afraid you’ll have to fear the worst. If he’s gone southeast then the first place that he can get water – if he hasn’t taken a local guide to show him where the wells are hidden – is the oasis at Siwa just before the Egyptian border; that’s over three hundred miles away and can take between ten and twenty days to get to, depending on the conditions.’
‘Then you’ll have to go and find him.’
‘Find him? Do you have any idea how big an area we’re talking about and how many men I’d have to take just to ensure that we’d get back?’
‘I don’t care,’ Flavia snapped. ‘He’s a freeborn Roman citizen and it’s your duty to protect him from slavery.’
‘Then he should have asked me for an escort before he went off on that idiotic trip,’ Vespasian retorted, aroused even further by the spirit that she was showing. ‘For a reasonable price I could have provided him with some cavalry.’
‘Then provide him with the cavalry now instead,’ Flavia insisted, rising to her feet. ‘I’m sure that he will prove generous when you find him.’
‘And what if I refuse?’
‘Then, Titus Flavius Vespasianus, kinsman or not, I will go to Rome and let it be known that you sat by and did nothing as a member of the equestrian order was abducted and sold into slavery. And I will furthermore allege that the reason that you did nothing was because you wanted to bed his woman.’ With that she turned on her heel and stormed out of the room.
Vespasian watched her go appreciatively, drew a deep breath and exhaled, shaking his head; she was certainly right about one thing: he did want to bed her. But she could give him more than just pleasure and, as his heart continued to send the blood racing around his body, he knew that he would risk anything to possess her.
Reacting out of instinct, Vespasian punched his left arm up, catching the lightning-swift downward cut of a gladius on the guard of his pugio. Twisting the dagger left, he forced the sword aside and down as he thrust his gladius forward at belly height to feel it parried to the right by firmly held iron.
‘So we may get some lion hunting in after all,’ Magnus said, pulling away from the embrace that the move had ended in. He was looking pleased for the first time since arriving in Cyrenaica; sweat glistened on his scarred torso.
‘I haven’t decided whether or not to go yet,’ Vespasian replied, taking the on-guard position: standing crouched, almost square-on, gladius low and forward with his pugio to one side and slightly withdrawn.
They were exercising next to a pomegranate tree in the courtyard garden at the heart of the Governor’s Residence, taking advantage of the cool of twilight. A couple of slaves worked their way around the colonnade lighting torches; the smoke that billowed off the freshly lit pitch-soaked rags contrasted sharply with the clean, fresh smell of the recently watered garden.
Magnus feinted to the right and then brought his gladius back-handed slicing towards Vespasian’s neck; parrying it with his pugio, Vespasian launched a series of criss-crossing strokes, forcing Magnus ever back as he struggled to counter them. Sensing victory he lunged for Magnus’ throat; Magnus ducked under the stroke and, thrusting his sword down onto Vespasian’s dagger, blocking it, he pushed his right shoulder up under Vespasian’s extended sword arm, knocking him off-balance while curling his right leg behind his opponent’s left, sending him crashing to the ground.
‘You were too anxious to win there, sir,’ Magnus said, pressing the blunted tip of his practice sword against Vespasian’s throat.
‘My mind was on other things,’ he responded as he pushed away the weapon.
Magnus leant down to help him up. ‘Well, she spoilt your concentration. Anyway, if you don’t go she could make trouble for you back in Rome.’
Vespasian scoffed and brushed some dirt from his arm. ‘No, she couldn’t; everyone would understand why I did nothing. Who’s going to sympathise with an idiot who goes off into the desert with hardly any escort in search of a tribe of slavers?’
Magnus looked disappointed. ‘So you ain’t going to go?’
Vespasian walked over to the pomegranate tree and sat down on the bench beneath it. ‘I didn’t say that; I just said that I wouldn’t go just because Flavia was threatening me. If I go it’ll be for different reasons.’
‘Because it might be fun?’
‘Did you see her?’ Vespasian asked, ignoring the question. He picked a jug up from the table and poured two cups of wine.
Magnus joined him on the bench taking a proffered cup. ‘Yes, briefly; she looked expensive.’
‘That’s true, but it was a good look: pure woman. And she showed spirit and loyalty; imagine what sort of sons a feisty woman like that would bear.’
Magnus looked at his friend, astonished. ‘You’re not serious, are you? What about
Caenis?’
The words of love in Caenis’ letter flashed though Vespasian’s mind and he shook his head regretfully. ‘As much as I’d want to, I could no more have children with Caenis than I could do with you. You because, no matter how hard and often I tried, you’d be barren; and Caenis because the children wouldn’t be recognised as citizens, being the product of an illegal union between a senator and a freedwoman.’
‘Yes, I suppose so; I’d never really thought about it like that before,’ Magnus said nodding and quaffing his drink. ‘So you’ll have to look elsewhere for your brood-mare?’
‘And Flavia seems to be perfect and to cap it all she’s a Flavian.’
‘What difference does that make?’
‘It means that her dowry will be staying within the clan and therefore her father is likely to make a larger settlement on her.’
‘Well, you’ll need it if you’re going to keep her in all that finery; she ain’t going to be cheap. So I suppose it’s pointless going to try and rescue her lover; much better to let him disappear out of the way.’
‘On the contrary, I’m going to take four turmae of cavalry and go and find him; if I don’t, then Flavia will never consider marrying me because she’s a loyal woman.’
‘If you don’t find him that will be fine, but if you bring him back then she’ll stay with him.’
‘Not necessarily.’ Vespasian grinned slyly at his friend. ‘If I do find him, I’ll give him the option of staying out in the desert and not having to pay the costs for his own rescue or returning with us to civilisation and a large invoice.’
‘What? The cost of keeping the cavalry supplied for however long it takes us to find him?’
‘Yes. Plus, of course, my own private expenses.’
‘Which will be how much?’
‘Oh, no more than Capella can afford to pay; say, one woman?’
CHAPTER II
‘HOW MUCH FURTHER, Aghilas?’ Marcus Valerius Messala Corvinus, the young, patrician prefect of the province’s Libu light cavalry snapped, wiping away the sweat that flowed freely from beneath his broad-brimmed straw hat.
The dark-skinned Libu scout pointed towards a small, rocky outcrop shimmering in the heat haze, some two miles distant. ‘Not far, master; it’s in among those rocks.’
‘And not a moment too soon,’ Magnus muttered, easing his hot and sore behind in the saddle. ‘It’s only three days since we came down off the plateau and I’ve already had enough of the desert.’
‘You didn’t have to come,’ Vespasian reminded his friend. ‘You could have stayed in the foothills and gone hunting; I’m sure Corvinus would have left you a couple of guides.’
Corvinus glanced at Vespasian in a way that assured him that he was completely mistaken on that point.
Magnus looked ruefully at the stout hunting-spear jiggling upright in a long, hardened-leather holster attached to his saddle and shook his head. ‘No, I wouldn’t have wanted to miss the fun; I just didn’t realise that there was so much desert.’
There was indeed a lot of desert.
Since descending from Cyrene’s plateau, two days after leaving the city, they had headed southeast, over a hard, dun-brown, rock-strewn wilderness that stretched to beyond the province’s vague southern border and then as far as the imagination; it provided a natural defence against whomever or whatever lived beyond this wasted land. Despite it being November the sun burned down during the day with a ferocity that belied the season; winter, however, caught up at night when the temperature plummeted and ice would form in the necks of their water-skins.
The hundred and twenty men of the four turmae detachment of Libu light cavalry, armed with light javelins, a cavalry spatha – a sword slightly longer than the infantry gladius – and curved knives and protected by small, round, leather-clad shields, took the conditions in their stride. Wide-brimmed straw hats shaded their faces and long, thick, undyed lambswool cloaks, worn over similar woollen tunics, protected them from the sun’s intense rays during the day and kept them warm in the freezing night air – fires were impossible as there was nothing to burn. Their Roman decurions had followed their men’s example for this expedition, since metal cuirasses and helmets were impractical in the scorching heat.
Each man carried a water-skin that held just enough for him and his mount to last for two days; that, together with the extra water, as well as grain for the horses and spare rations for the troopers, carried by the trail of pack-mules following the column, meant they could last for three days without resupplying. Navigation through the almost featureless landscape was therefore crucial as they were obliged to travel via two wells, part of a network of ancient wells dug throughout the desert by the Marmaridae, generations ago, to enable them to make the crossing from their grazing lands in the north, near the coast over a hundred miles east of Cyrene, to the oasis at Siwa and beyond.
‘How the fuck does Aghilas find his way out here?’ Magnus asked Corvinus as they approached the outcrop where, their guide had assured them, they would find the first well of their journey. ‘There’s nothing to navigate by.’
Corvinus looked haughtily at Magnus before deigning to reply. ‘He was taken as a slave by the Marmaridae when he was a boy and lived with them for ten years before escaping. He’s made countless trips across the desert; I’ve used him before and he’s never let me down.’
‘When was the last time you were out here?’ Vespasian enquired, trying to be friendly to this aloof patrician; he had not had much contact with Corvinus, who spent most of his time at Barca, southwest of Cyrene, where the auxiliary cavalry were based.
‘Just before you arrived, quaestor.’ There was almost a tone of mockery in his voice as he used Vespasian’s official title. ‘We chased a raiding party for a couple of days; didn’t catch them, though. Their camels aren’t as fast as horses in a gallop but they can do eighty or ninety miles in ten hours without stopping for water; at that speed and in this heat our horses just collapse.’
‘Have you ever caught any?’
‘No, not once in the seven months that I’ve had the misfortune to be stationed here. And I don’t know what makes you think that it’ll be any different this time; you’d have to surprise—’
A sharp cry from Aghilas as he fell from his horse cut Corvinus short; an instant later his own mount reared up, tipping him onto the ground. Vespasian heard the hiss of an arrow passing just over his head followed immediately by the cry of a trooper behind him.
‘Form line by turma,’ Corvinus shouted, jumping to his feet as his horse crashed, screeching, to the ground next to him; a blood-soaked arrow protruded from its chest.
The four thirty-man turmae fanned out across the desert; the whinnying of wounded horses and the shrill blare of the lituus, a cavalry horn, filled the air.
A hundred paces away among the rocks Vespasian could see their attackers breaking cover and sprinting towards a dozen or so similar-coloured, smaller, more rounded rocks. A few moments later these rocks seemed to spring to life as the fleeing men jumped on them and they rose from the ground, as if they had suddenly grown first back legs then front; they turned and galloped away southwards.
‘Decurion, take your turma and get those camel-fucking Marmaridae bastards; we’re close enough to catch them. I want one alive,’ Corvinus bellowed at the nearest Latin-looking face.
As the turma peeled away Vespasian shot Magnus a questioning glance.
‘I don’t hold with fighting mounted but I suppose it’ll make up for not hunting lions,’ Magnus said, kicking his horse forward.
With a grin Vespasian followed, urging his mount into a gallop. The wind immediately tore his hat from his head and it fluttered behind him attached by the loose, leather strap around his throat.
They quickly cleared the outcrop and Vespasian felt that they were gaining on the slower but more durable camels, less than two hundred paces ahead; he could count about twenty of them. The turma had spread out into dispersed order, the troopers expert
ly guiding their horses around the larger stones that littered the baked, cracked ground. The occasional wild shot passed overhead or to one side but there were no hits – accurate archery from a moving camel at an enemy behind you would prove difficult, Vespasian surmised from the ungainly gait of the strange beasts.
After a half-mile, the Marmaridae were less than a hundred paces away; sensing that they would certainly catch their attackers, the troopers urged their horses to greater efforts. Sweat foamed from under their saddles and saliva flecked from their mouths as they responded to their riders’ wishes.
Vespasian reached behind him and pulled one of the ten light javelins, which each man carried, from the carry-case strapped to his saddle and slipped his forefinger through the leather thong halfway down the shaft. Their target was now little more than seventy paces ahead and Vespasian felt the familiar thrill and tension of imminent battle; he had not been in combat since the attack on his parents’ estate at Aquae Cutillae over four years previously and his desire for it was heightened by the ennui of the last few months.
With only sixty paces separating the two groups, the Marmaridae, realising that they had no chance of escape, suddenly turned their camels and charged the turma, releasing a volley of arrows. To Vespasian’s right a trooper was punched out of the saddle with a scream; his horse raced on, taken up by the excitement of the charge.
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