SPQR VI: Nobody Loves a Centurion

by John Maddox Roberts

  Another dead end. I did not dare ask these men about Vinius’s sudden wealth. Isolated though they were, the news would be all over the camp within hours.

  “If you want to know what he was doing that night,” said a decurion, “ask that ugly slave of his, Molon. He’s a lying little sneak like all slaves, but if you lash him for a while, or put a hot iron to his feet, he just might tell you what you need to know.”

  This advice was in keeping with the common belief of Romans that slaves are inveterate liars. Even our courts will not allow the testimony of slaves unless they are tortured first, on the assumption that only torture will make a slave tell the truth. I have never understood the reasoning behind this wide-spread prejudice, because it has been my experience that nobody, slave or free, ever tells the truth if they see the slightest advantage in lying.

  “You might try the German girl,” hazarded another, “although I’d hate to mark that one up.” They all took on a look of collective lust.

  “Don’t bother,” said the one who had recommended tormenting Molon. “That one’ll spit in your eye if you threaten her with thumbscrews or a hot iron. Germans are like that.”

  “How do you know so much about Germans?” I asked him.

  “It’s what we’ve heard,” he answered, as if that explained everything. Soldiers place enormous confidence in rumor. I do not think this is confined to Roman legionaries. Things were probably the same at the siege of Troy. Our whole system of taking auguries is an attempt at rumor control. Before taking any military action we first observe for omens to see if the gods are favorable. If the omens are good ones, everybody feels better. If they are unfavorable, we usually go ahead and fight anyway. Then, if we lose, we can blame the general for ignoring the bad omens. It works out.

  “In recent months,” I said, “did Vinius display any major change of behavior or character?” I watched the faces of men struggling with an unfamiliar concept.

  “He did say something strange a few weeks ago,” the optio said at last. “I said to him that next year, if he didn’t transfer to another legion, he’d be able to step in as Prefect of the Camp when Paterculus retires. You know what he said?”

  “What did he say?” I prodded gently.

  “He just shrugged and said, ‘Let someone else have it.’ ”

  “He said that?” a decurion gasped, disbelieving.

  “Doesn’t make sense,” said another. “I mean, First Spear’s a fine slot, but Prefect of the Camp’s where you get a chance to clean up and provide for your retirement. What’s the point of soldiering for twenty-four years if you’re going to pass up the best rating in the legion?”

  “At the time I just thought he meant he was thinking of transferring,” said the optio. “Crassus is offering big bonuses for centurions to help raise and train the legions he wants for his war with Parthia. But now I think of it, he probably couldn’t. Caesar is serious about a big, long war with the Gauls, and he has this five-year imperium. The only way anyone’s going to transfer out of his legions is by hopping a ride with the ferryman.”

  “Crassus’s agents have been nosing around?” I said. “He doesn’t even have Senate approval for a war with Parthia.”

  “I guess he figures he can buy it,” said Vehilius. “People say that Crassus can buy anything, including his own legions.”

  This last was quite true. Crassus always did things in a big way. But he was supposed to be raising legions for Caesar, not building his own. This would bear thinking about.

  Think about it was what I did as I made my way back to the camp. Crassus had for years been jealous of Pompey’s military glory, and glory counted for much in Roman politics. During the years that Pompey had been subduing one enemy after another, Crassus’ only military distinction had been in defeating Spartacus, a victory now more than twelve years past: an eternity in Roman politics. Granted, Spartacus had been an enemy more dangerous than all the others combined, but there was precious little glory to be had from defeating slaves. Even then, Pompey had followed his usual pattern of stepping in at the last minute, wiping out a remnant of the already defeated slave army, and then taking credit for the whole war.

  It was no wonder that Crassus drooled at the prospect of a war with Parthia. It was the only really credible enemy we had on our frontiers at the time. They were a relatively civilized people, militarily powerful and, best of all, they controlled the silk route, a source of inestimable wealth.

  Crassus was getting old, and was all too aware of the fact. Lately, he had been running on to any who would listen about his upcoming Parthian war, even though the Parthians had done little to provoke our wrath. Certainly, the war in Gaul would absorb our energies for some time to come. Were these just the senile ramblings of a frustrated politician? Little matter. His wealth made him a power to fear no matter how crazy he might have become.

  Even so, Gaul was a long way from Rome and I had difficulty crediting even the wealth of Crassus with such a reach. Vinius had somehow achieved wealth far beyond the most lavish bribes a centurion could hope for.

  I knew that, as always in a case like this one, I lacked all the evidence. In truth, one almost never gets all the evidence, but you need a certain minimum to approach any conclusions at all. It didn’t help that I was working in barbarian territory among soldiers who were only marginally less hostile than the barbarians themselves.

  I found Paterculus in his tent, which was situated in the praetorium not far from Caesar’s. The Prefect of the Camp was going over some paperwork with a clerk. When I entered, he looked up with all the warmth and interest of a rock. “What can I do for you, Senator?” Leave it to a man like that to turn a civilian title of respect into a disgusting epithet.

  “A little information about the last night of the late Titus Vinius, if you please,” I said, putting as much upper-class disdain into my tone as I could, which was considerable. Time to put this ill-bred sod in his place.

  “Last saw him at evening parade. Will that do?” So much for intimidation.

  “Hardly. Did you not attend the meeting Caesar held afterward? The one with the Provincials bringing land disputes for judgment?”

  “Why should I have? I had duties to attend to; inspecting the guard, posting the officers of the gates, that sort of thing. I’m responsible for the security of this camp, you know. Do you think I get to laze around like a tribune?”

  I allowed his insolence to pass. “Then I take it that the location, movement, and disposition of civilians to, within, and from the camp also lie within your purview?”

  “They do. You talk just like a lawyer.”

  “A qualification I share with our commander and Proconsul,” I reminded him. “At what time must foreigners leave the camp?”

  “When the sunset trumpet sounds, unless they have an extended pass from me or from the Proconsul or the legatus, and those permissions have to be submitted to me first.”

  “Were there any such special passes granted that evening?”

  “Yes, to the party with the land disputes. Caesar thought the business might extend well after sunset, so he had me make out passes for them.”

  “Did the pass list them all by name?”

  “No, of course not. It was for the party as a whole. There were forty or fifty of them.”

  “So many? Nobody mentioned that many at the meeting.”

  “These are substantial men, by local standards; big land-owners. They arrived with personal guards, grooms, slaves to handle their animals, the lot. Most of them stayed in the forum or the livestock compound while the meeting was going on.”

  “Who had charge of the pass?”

  He looked honestly puzzled. “What on earth could that mean to you?”

  “It has considerable bearing on the matter,” I said, looking serious and wise to cover my confusion.

  “The Druids held it. It’s their custom. Gauls think writing is some sort of magic. For all they know, you hand them a papyrus with writing on it, you might be p
utting a curse on them. They think their Druids are proof against evil magic.”

  “Do you know which Druid took charge of the pass?”

  “It was the youngest one brought it to me for validation, but any of them might have presented it at the gate.”

  “Are departing civilians allowed to use any of the gates?”

  He shook his head. “Only the Porta Praetoria.”

  “Who was the officer in charge of the Praetoria that night?”

  He turned to the clerk. “Get the roster.”

  The clerk wore armor, so he was another soldier pulling special duty. He didn’t bother to look for the roster. “It was the ninth night after the full moon, so it was the tribune of the Ninth Cohort.”

  “That’s Publius Aurelius Cotta,” Paterculus informed me. “Another snot-nosed shavetail sent to plague my days.”

  “Was he on the gate all night?”

  Paterculus looked at me as if I had handed him a mortal insult. “No officer of the guard leaves his post unless properly relieved. If he does, by every god of the State I’ll see him beheaded in front of the whole army, no matter how ancient and illustrious his name is!” Obviously, I had trod on the sensitive corns of his authority.

  “Very good, Prefect. Carry on.” I turned neatly and walked out of the tent. Behind me I fancied I could hear him fuming.

  I pondered upon the minutiae of military practice as I went in search of Aurelius Cotta. Soldiers could blithely ignore the grossest acts of cruelty and depravity, yet grow infuriated over minuscule breaches of procedure and precedence. To an inspecting centurion, a speck of rust on a sword blade or a dangling bootlace was exactly the same thing as a military defeat: It was something that shouldn’t happen and must be punished. He could work up precisely the same amount and degree of rage over each.

  That same centurion could watch his soldiers sacking an enemy village, slaughtering and raping and destroying everything in sight, and it was “just the boys acting up a bit.” The fundamental difference between the military and the civilian mentality, I believe, is a totally divergent sense of proportion.

  I found a gaggle of tribunes dicing their time away beneath a lean-to erected near the stables. As officers elected by the centuriate assembly, they had the privilege of bringing their own horses along on campaign, so they regarded the stables as part of their territory. Their current occupation was typical of tribunes, who usually lack for meaningful duties. Of soldiers generally, for that matter. I firmly believe that an army’s load could be lightened considerably just by getting rid of all the dice.

  I walked up behind my cousin Lumpy and nudged him with my toe. “Where is that hundred you owe me?” It had become my invariable greeting.

  “Do you think I’d be trying to win some drinking money if I was rich?” he grumbled. “Besides, no man who’s been given that German piece has any cause for complaint.”

  “Tell you what,” I proposed. “Give me that hundred and you can have Molon.”

  “I’ll trade you my horse and my personal slave for that German girl.”

  “Your keen business acumen will bring credit to our family yet. I’m looking for Aurelius Cotta. Has anybody seen him?”

  One of the tribunes looked up from the bone cubes. “I saw him over by the armory a while ago.”

  “Thanks.” I turned to go. Lumpy got up and began to walk along beside me.

  “Listen, Decius,” he began, hesitantly, “I know Caesar appointed you investigator, but that was just a matter of form, don’t you think? Like when a praetor appoints an index for a case that’s really not important, but constitutional forms have to be followed?”

  “Lumpy, I know that, in your tiresome way, you’re trying to say something. Why not just say it?”

  “Decius, you’re building up a lot of bad feeling here, the way you’ve been interrogating officers and centurions like common felons. I think you had better back off and let those men take their punishment.”

  I stopped and turned on him. “What is this to you?” I demanded.

  “I am a Caecilius Metellus, too. Everything you do rubs off on me!”

  “You’ll smell none the worse for it,” I said. “You can’t really care about this—you aren’t involved in any way. Did someone put you up to this? Someone involved in the activities of the night in question?”

  “Nobody!” he said, but his eyes kept sliding away from mine as if he found my ears to be of some interest. “I’m just catching a lot of grief from the others because of the way you’re acting.”

  I stepped close and stared him down. When his eyes dropped, I addressed him. “Lumpy, I had better not learn that you are holding out on me. If the son of my old retainer is flogged to death with sticks because you withheld information from me, you’ll wish you’d gone with him.”

  He laughed nervously. “Don’t get in such a state, Decius! We are family, after all. I’d never interfere with your duties, and if the boy is a client of the Caecilii, he deserves our help. I’m just asking you not to tread so heavily. You have a way of questioning people that infuriates these soldiers. They don’t care about birth and officeholding and education. They respect only a better soldier, and you aren’t that.”

  “Just remember what I’ve told you.” I whirled and stalked off. There was some truth in what he said. This was not a good place to sling my arrogant weight around, but it is not easy to suppress fifty generations of breeding. And I knew perfectly well that he was not telling me the whole truth. Was anybody?

  I found Cotta having an edge put on his sword. This was a sure sign of nerves. The armorer was doing a great business sharpening the weapons of the tribunes, as if they had much chance of using them. Youngsters going into their first campaign always do two things: they spend all day fussing over their weapons and all night making out their wills.

  “A word with you, Publius Aurelius, if you don’t mind,” I said.

  “Certainly,” he said, his eyes on the armorer’s hands. The man was working the edge of the sword in tiny circles on a very large whetstone set in a long, wooden box full of oil. His movements were slow and precise. The edge on a Roman sword is not so much ground as polished into the steel. With such an edge it takes amazingly little effort to inflict a horrendous wound.

  “I think you can leave the man to his work,” I said. “He won’t fail you.”

  “Oh, yes, of course.” He came away reluctantly. “How may I help you?”

  “Paterculus tells me that you were officer in charge of the Porta Praetoria the night Titus Vinius was killed.”

  “I had that duty.” His eyes slid back toward his sword.

  “Publius, pay attention. The Gauls are a long way off and Caesar will be back with reinforcements long before they can attack.”

  He looked shamefaced. “Sorry.”

  “After the sundown trumpet sounded, did anyone pass through the Porta Praetoria?”

  “About two hours after the trumpet sounded a party of locals presented a pass from the Proconsul, validated by the Prefect of the Camp, and I let them through.”

  “Describe this party.”

  He thought about it. “Well, the men were important, you could see that by the amount of gold jewelry they wore, and their horses were good ones. There were seven or eight of them, plus those three Druids who’ve been around the camp the last few days. It was one of the elder Druids who handed me the pass.” So Badraig hadn’t been designated as the writing handler.

  “Describe the rest of the party.”

  “There were a dozen or so guards. They were all armed in the Gallic style: longswords, narrow shields, no armor except a helmet or two. They were from the Province, though, you could tell that. They weren’t all painted up and spike-haired like the wild men.”

  “Who else?” I asked.

  He frowned, puzzled. “Well, there was nobody else. Just some slaves.”

  “Describe the slaves.”

  Now he looked at me as if I must be demented. “They just loo
ked like slaves: dark clothes, some carrying loads, some leading pack animals or remounts. I didn’t pay much attention.” Reasonable enough: Who ever notices slaves?

  “And did no one else leave through the Porta Praetoria after that party?”

  “Not while I was on duty.”

  I clapped him on the shoulder. “Thank you, Publius, you’ve been a great help. You can go back to your sword now.”

  “Well—certainly. Any way I can be of assistance.” He obviously considered me a prize loon, but I was well satisfied. Another little piece of the puzzle had just been handed me and I walked away from him with a little more cheer in my heart.

  Who ever pays attention to slaves? We live our lives surrounded by them and we act as if they are not there at all. Men will speak indiscreetly in their presence as if they did not have ears. Noble ladies who would never appear in public without shawls and veils, in their own homes will parade around naked in front of male slaves as if they were not men.

  The high-born citizenry wear mostly finely woven white clothes with a touch of color here and there. The lower born wear the most colorful garments they can afford. Slaves wear dark, rough clothes.

  Now I knew how Vinius had left the camp unnoticed. He had gone out with that pack of slaves. Dressed in that dark, coarse tunic, probably with a burden over his shoulders to further hide his face, he had simply walked through, knowing nobody would notice.

  So what had happened, out there on the heath? Not what he was expecting, that much was certain. Whatever game he had been playing for a year or more had backlashed him.

  I wanted a few words with those Druids.

  But it was late and I was hungry and I had no idea where the Druids might be. The Provincials with their land dispute were doubtless halfway back to Massilia by now. First things first.

  Back at my tent, I dropped into my folding chair beneath the awning and pounded on the little table. “Hermes! Molon! Where is dinner?”