Semper Fidelis: A Novel of the Roman Empire

by Ruth Downie

While the girl paused to wipe her nose on the back of her hand, Tilla tried to make sense of what she had said. “Three soldiers are dead, but from different causes, and one has run away.”

  Virana nodded vigorously, shaking the remaining strands of hair loose. “Corinna really is Victor’s wife. But that’s none of the army’s business, is it?”

  Talking with this girl was like trying to catch fleas: you never knew which way she was going to jump. “That depends on who you ask.”

  Virana thought about that for a moment. “It’s not so bad for me, really, is it? I mean, I’ve got plenty to choose from. Corinna never lay with anybody else, so she can’t get them to help now that Victor’s gone.”

  It seemed the local girls had rushed to make the new recruits very welcome indeed. A harder woman would have told them that if they must take on a soldier, go for an older man who was about to settle down with his retirement fund. The young ones had no money, little free time, and no choice over where they were posted—but of course they had clear eyes and smooth skin and full heads of hair, and they thought they were immortal. Until, it seemed, they came to Eboracum.

  She decided to approach from a different angle. “Who spoke this curse, Virana?”

  The girl glanced at the open window again. “I do not think one ram to Jupiter will make much difference.”

  “What should I tell my husband to look out for?”

  Virana got to her feet and adjusted the pink dress again. “I have to go now. I don’t have to pay, do I? You didn’t help me.”

  “I need something,” Tilla insisted. “I have done everything I can for you, and I cannot have word go round that I see patients for free.”

  Virana pulled at a strand of her hair. “I have no money.”

  “You hoped I would help you because I am generous?”

  “I hoped if I warned you about the curse …”

  “What you have told me is gossip. I need to know exactly what my husband has to fear in the fort. Who spoke the curse, and why?”

  The girl twisted the hair around her forefinger until the fingertip went white. “It will probably be all right,” she said at length. “It is only the recruits that bad things happen to. An officer from Deva will be safe.”

  “I hope so, Virana. Because if you have lied to me, I will find you, and you will be sorry.”

  Chapter 13

  The empress Sabina had long ago formed her own theory about the nonsense in travel books. No traveler, having gone to the expense and trouble of venturing where most civilized people were too sensible to go, was going to come home and admit that it had been a waste of time. Instead, he had to pronounce his destination to be full of strange wonders, like the elk with no knees that could be caught by sabotaging the tree against which it leaned when it slept (Julius Caesar) or the men from India who could wrap themselves in their own ears (reported by the elder Pliny, who seemed to have written down everything he was ever told), or the blue-skinned Britons (Julius Caesar again).

  Strangely, no traveler ever brought one of these creatures home for inspection. Doubtless they were impossible to capture, or died on the journey, or the blue came off in the wash.

  Travel, in Sabina’s experience—and the gods knew she had suffered enough of it in the last twenty years—was less a matter of wonder than of discomfort and disappointment. Londinium was no exception. It had been as empty of blue-skinned natives and promiscuous Druid women as she had feared. Instead, the outgoing governor had led them on a tour of the local forum, followed by an interminable display of marching, fighting, and killing in the amphitheater. In the evenings she and the emperor had been trapped for hours in the palace dining room with provincial administrators and hairy native chieftains. As if the emperor could not see fora or amphitheaters, or eat oysters, or meet barbarians who spoke Latin everywhere he went! The irony, which of course the native chieftains would never be subtle enough to grasp, was that while they were eager to be Romans, their esteemed Roman leader liked to pose as an intellectual Greek.

  But since Julia had fallen pregnant—no doubt on purpose in order to avoid this trip—there was no friend with whom she could share the joke. The slaves were all chosen by Hadrian, and presumably primed to report her every complaint, yawn, and mutinous scowl.

  The governor’s wife, poor woman, was as tedious as Sabina feared she herself might become if she were obliged to spend much longer marooned in the provinces. She was desperate for the latest gossip from Rome—as if Sabina had been there recently, instead of dutifully shivering through a Germanic winter that froze your teeth if you opened your mouth, and turned the slaves’ feet and noses blue with cold.

  Perhaps things would be better when they finally arrived in Deva. Paulina had sounded positively thrilled to know that her distant and now very famous cousin was coming to visit. She had promised to keep Sabina entertained while the emperor and her husband did all those important things that emperors and legates had to do. Meanwhile, Sabina had asked the governor’s wife in vain for the locations of singing stones, statues that spoke, stuffed monsters, giants’ bones, or relics of Helen of Troy. She supposed pyramids were unlikely in Britannia, as were temples filled with treasures, or elephants trained to write, or fountains that miraculously spouted wine—although admittedly she had never been able to pin down the last two herself. But it seemed even the distant hills of the North and West boasted no steaming sulfurous craters or fissures belching poison gases. There was not even an oracle.

  “There is the circle of very large stones, madam.”

  “Do they do anything?”

  “Not that I know of. But you might like the temple of Sulis Minerva at Aquae Sulis.”

  “What does that do?”

  “It is an old and very holy place where a constant supply of hot water springs out of the ground.”

  “How very convenient,” she conceded. “If one were short of slaves.”

  “The people throw in offerings to the goddess and curses on their enemies.”

  “Well, I suppose it will have to do. Is it nearby?”

  Sadly, it was not.

  The only way to get to Paulina at Deva was to travel north with the emperor. Even that was a better prospect than staying in Londinium, discussing cushion covers with the governor’s wife. Besides, there was always a faint chance that the stories of a northern land of perpetual daylight might be true. Even if they were not, Tranquillus and Clarus would be amusing and intelligent company on the journey. Although they did not dare say so, she was sure they, too, wished they were back at home: Tranquillus working on his writing, and Clarus, who always looked as though his uniform belonged to somebody else, with his nose buried in a scroll.

  Hadrian could find someone else to bore with his lectures about drawings and measurements. His latest project might be the biggest and best wall in the empire, but it was still just a wall. Of course, she was the only one who had ever dared to tell him so.

  An auspicious day had been chosen for the start of the voyage, and the omens had been good. Even so, things had gone wrong almost straight away. The dress she wanted to wear turned out to be in one of several trunks loaded onto the wrong ship. Clarus had been assigned to another vessel with most of his men, while the quiet and nondescript man who had been hanging around in the governor’s palace—and was undoubtedly some sort of spy—turned up on deck and then vanished, giving her the uneasy feeling that he had hidden somewhere to watch everybody. Or perhaps just her.

  Tranquillus had shrunk yet again from letting her read his History of Famous Prostitutes and still refused to tell her stories from it lest the emperor should disapprove. Then after two days, the wind had risen. The mounting seas had hidden Clarus’s ship along with the vessel carrying her luggage and the motley collection of ambassadors seeking an audience with the emperor. She had felt increasingly ill. Tranquillus had retired to his cabin “to work on his latest biography.” Her maid reported that the only sign of productivity was the occasional emergence of a slave clu
tching a covered bucket.

  She no longer cared. It was impossible to be amused or intrigued when the wallowing and heaving of the gray waters outside seemed to be competing with what was going on in one’s stomach. It was a great pity that the author who had declared the sea around the north of Britannia to be “sluggish and scarcely troubled by winds” was already dead. She would have taken great pleasure in arranging to have him tied in a sack and thrown into it.

  The emperor, of course—that was how she thought of him these days: the emperor, not my husband—the emperor was still striding about the deck, giving orders to the captain and encouragement to the crew before expecting his weary companions to join him for stimulating conversation over platters that slid about on the table. Hadrian had scant sympathy for those who succumbed to seasickness: evidently it was one of the many forms of weakness to which one should not yield.

  There was a soft tap at the door.

  “Come!”

  A blast of damp air blew a slave into the little cabin. The slave was clutching a tray in one hand and had a cup clamped onto it with the other. She fell backward, slamming the door with her bottom.

  Faintly recollecting that she had asked for some water, Sabina said, “Just leave it on the floor.”

  The slave, appointed by the emperor and so doubtless a spy, did as she was told and withdrew. A moment later the ship gave a violent lurch to starboard. Somewhere outside, a woman screamed. The cup fell over, sending trickles of water exploring first one way and then another across the boards. Every timber around her seemed to be creaking as if it was straining to part from its neighbor.

  Men were shouting. Footsteps hurried past the cabin. The bedchamber slave crouched to wipe up the water just as the ship hit another wave. The girl fell sideways, grabbing at the end of Sabina’s small sleeping platform to steady herself. Seawater slid in under the door and sloshed across the planking. Normally silent unless told to speak, the girl began to gabble prayers to her gods.

  More shouting. More lurching.

  The empress Sabina lay on her side, closed her eyes and prayed for sleep. Or death. Either would do, so long as she stopped feeling like this, but neither was happening. The pitching and rolling of the ship grew worse. She clung to the edge of the sleeping platform to steady herself. Finally the prayers ended in a shriek as the world rolled sideways. Sabina lost her grip and landed on top of the struggling slave.

  The women slid in a heap of limbs into the corner. Water was streaming in from all directions now. They clung to each other, the slave sobbing and wailing and Sabina trying to call out prayers to Neptune over the crashing of waves and the straining of timbers.

  They both screamed as the door burst open and a bedraggled figure staggered in, clutching a knife. It bent to slash the ropes that held the trunk containing her jewelry in place beneath the sleeping platform and dragged it toward the door.

  Remembering her duty, the slave made a lunge for it. “Thief! Stop!”

  “Captain’s orders!” he yelled.

  Sabina pulled her back, put her mouth against the girl’s wet hair, and shouted, “They are throwing everything over to make the ship lighter. Be glad you are not going with it. If this does not work, we will all drown.”

  Chapter 14

  Accius reclined on one of the rather worn couches that graced his private dining suite in the mansio, and Ruso congratulated himself on his mature lack of jealousy as he noted that this room alone was three times the size of the space he was sharing with his wife. The housekeeper who had irritated Tilla bustled around straightening covers while Ruso and the remaining guests spread themselves across the other couches.

  While the mansio slaves in their matching cream-and-brown tunics trotted in to serve drinks, a confusing set of introductions was performed. There were four centurions, plus a man from the auxiliaries who explained that he was in charge of road patrols and proceeded to say nothing else all evening. Perhaps he was overawed. The others all had at least three jobs each. The granite-faced Geminus appeared to be in control of the recruits and of everyone else. Dexter had something to do with the maintenance crews. The plump one was in charge of stores and supplies, and smelled as though he had been checking out the wine stocks before he arrived. The one with thinning hair and a careworn expression was tasked with fobbing off the complaints of the locals, or as it was officially known, “Civilian liaison.” All gave the impression that they would be happy to shed a few titles in exchange for being posted somewhere else.

  “So,” said Accius, helping himself from a bowl of hard-boiled eggs that had been cut into halves and dolloped with some sort of green sauce, “no problems getting things lit in the rain?”

  Geminus said, “All done, sir. Quick, quiet, respectable.”

  “Good. I didn’t want funerals hanging over the proceedings tomorrow. How are the men?”

  “Our lads are all right, sir,” put in Dexter, apparently speaking for the plump one and the careworn one as well. “It’s the recruits.”

  “Hearing about the sacrifice to Jupiter seems to have settled them down a bit, sir,” said Geminus. “And they took heart from what you told them about Deva. We shouldn’t have too much trouble on the march.”

  The recruits Ruso had met seemed glum rather than rebellious. It had not occurred to him that there might be any trouble on the long march west to legionary headquarters, but as he listened to the practical arrangements for packing and transport being discussed around him, it became evident that the recruits were being treated with a certain wariness.

  “As soon as we get them back to base,” said Accius, dabbling his hands in the finger bowl held out to him by one of the slaves, “they’ll be split up between the centuries.” He smiled. “And while the rest of us continue to endure the ghastly conditions on this island, Geminus, you’ll be sitting in the sunshine on your little farm in Campania.”

  Geminus inclined his head and said, “I shall, sir,” without a trace of humor.

  Ruso reflected that Hadrian, who insisted on mixing with the ranks and sharing a military diet, was probably the only man in the army who did not grumble about his working conditions. No doubt the incoming troops would have plenty to say about the state in which the Twentieth had left the fortress at Eboracum. Meanwhile the Twentieth would have the satisfaction of knowing that the headquarters and their one occupied corner showed they were civilized men, even though they had long ago stripped the remaining buildings of anything that might contribute to the domestic bliss of their successors. Anyone who imagined that the legions were happily united in the service of the emperor was woefully naïve.

  Reaching for a spoonful of the fish with leeks that had been a favorite recipe of his first wife, it occurred to Ruso that Claudia would not have been impressed with his conduct so far this evening. You must make an effort, Gaius! Do try and join the conversation. People will think you don’t approve of them! He doubted they cared whether he approved of them or not, but it was clear he was not going to find out anything interesting unless he asked.

  “I was wondering, sir,” he put in when they seemed to have run out of things to say about the crop yields of the farm Geminus had bought in Campania, “why the recruits were sent here instead of being trained at Deva.”

  “Because somebody has to garrison Eboracum while everyone’s up on the border building the emperor’s wall,” explained the tribune, as if it were obvious.

  “And they look like soldiers to the natives,” added Geminus.

  “Ah,” said Ruso, suspecting he now appeared dim rather than sociable, and not sure what to say next.

  “It was thought,” continued Accius, helpfully filling the silence, “that if we trained them over here, they wouldn’t pick up bad habits from the older men back at Deva.”

  “But it turned out they’d got plenty of their own,” observed Geminus.

  “You’ve all done everything that could possibly be asked of you,” Accius assured the centurions. “I saw that for myself this
afternoon.”

  Geminus said, “I should have got rid of that lad before, sir. But sometimes a recruit like that comes good.”

  Dexter wiped his bowl with a chunk of bread. “You can’t do anything with a man whose mind has gone.” He crammed the bread into his mouth as if there were nothing more to be said on the subject.

  Ruso felt there was a great deal more to be said, but not here. Instead he reached for the water jug. “So how did they get the idea they were cursed?”

  No one replied. He glanced up. The others were looking at him as if he were an earwig that had just crawled out of their lettuce. He had a feeling this was not the sort of reaction Claudia would have intended.

  “The curse of the Britons,” said Geminus finally, “is that they don’t do what they’re told. A couple of them found out the hard way that they should have paid more attention in swimming practice.”

  “Geminus dived in and rescued one of them himself,” said Accius, as if he were afraid his relative might be too modest to mention it.

  “Lost the other one downstream.” Geminus shook his head, acknowledging defeat. “Then this week we lost one in a training accident, and they’ve put the two together and made up some tale that means none of it’s their own fault.” He clapped his glass down on a side table as if signaling the end of this depressing subject and turned to Accius. “I noticed the mention of discipline in your speech, sir. Very appropriate.”

  “Ah, yes.” Accius reached for his own wine. “Of course, you know why we have altars to Disciplina.”

  “To encourage the men, sir?” ventured the plump one.

  “The same reason we have coins celebrating Concordia,” said Accius, taking a sip and looking around the room. “Because we like to pretend we’ve got it.”

  “We do, sir,” agreed Geminus. The plump centurion gave a grunt that might or might not have been assent, the thin one looked round for a cue, and the silent one busied himself with his dinner.