The Mask of Command

by Ian Ross

  ‘No! They care nothing for me – why should they? And they don’t know of any connection between us. Nor must they. I’m careful to appear very wifely and unassuming, you see.’

  Castus coughed a laugh. He knew well that there was more spirit and courage in this woman than in Magnius Rufus and all his friends. He had seen that, back in Britain, long ago. But he had seen how the years had changed her, the very many years of domestic life and disappointed expectations wearing away at her soul. For all her fine clothes and houses, her children and her literature collection, marriage to Julius Dulcitius must bring few pleasures.

  They were passing the north side of the forum now. The sound of riotous singing from an alleyway, and a burst of laughter: a knot of revellers swung out across the street, but with one glance at the armed bodyguards escorting the litter they fell back.

  ‘It was Saturnalia when you came to see me in Eboracum,’ Castus said.

  ‘I remember!’ Marcellina replied, and grinned broadly. He was glad to see it. ‘I was bolder then... You mustn’t think,’ she went on, ‘that my life is too drab. Compared to what might have happened, it’s a blessing from the gods. I grieve every day for what I lost back in Britain – my family, my home, my hopes, everything! – but I’m content. Please believe that.’

  Castus nodded, unable to meet her searching eye. She sounded unconvinced herself. Abruptly the slave leading the litter gestured to the left, and the bearers swung into a narrow alley that ended at the large brick portal of a townhouse.

  ‘This is Dulcitius’s house,’ Marcellina said. ‘Will you...?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ Castus said quickly. ‘I have business at the Praetorium. I only wanted to see you safely home.’

  ‘One moment,’ she said, drawing a tablet and stylus from beneath the cushions as the slaves lowered the litter down between them. She scratched quickly; then, as the litter bumped to the ground, she nudged the tablet and let it fall to the cobbles.

  ‘Thank you for your escort, excellency,’ Marcellina said, climbing out and pulling her shawl around her head. She bowed demurely and then walked towards the house.

  Castus watched her as she passed through the portal. With a swift movement he stooped and picked up the fallen tablet. As he straightened again he caught the eye of one of his bodyguards, who stifled a leer and glanced away, whistling silently to himself. Sticking the tablet beneath his belt, Castus signalled to his men and set off once more towards the Praetorium. With every step he felt the tablet burning against his side.

  *

  Five words, so rapidly scratched into the wax that it had taken him a good few frowning moments to decipher them.

  I must see you. Soon.

  Castus slumped at the end of the couch in his private chamber, staring at the tablet lying on the table beside him. For so long now – ever since their reintroduction in the library of Rufus’s villa the previous autumn – the thought of Marcellina had been itching in Castus’s mind. Not an unpleasant itch, but it troubled him deeply. Since Sabina’s death he had promised himself that he would involve himself no more with women – free Roman women, anyway. Part of the pleasure of his relationship with Ganna, he had to admit, was its impossibility. He had offered to marry her, had wanted to do it, but knew that she would never accept. Her rules had been different to his own, different to those of civilised society. But with Marcellina he was opening himself to vulnerability once more, to the possibility of loss, of disgrace and of weakness. She was a married woman anyway. He should put this from his mind.

  With a decisive cough he leaned forward, snatched up the tablet and rubbed at the wax with his thumb until the words were gone. But when he reclined again he picked up the scroll she had given him at the house months before. He had erased her word of warning from that, too, and then made a few attempts at reading the verses. Ovidius, the poet was called. Metamorphoses. He wondered if that too was supposed to be a message of some kind. Transformations in life, in fortunes. Idly he ran his fingers over the smooth ivory boss of the scroll, staring at the ceiling.

  A sudden crash from the next room broke him from his reveries. A man’s shout, and a scratching of boot-studs on floor tiles. Castus was on his feet already as the door burst open and a figure was propelled, stumbling, into the chamber.

  ‘Sorry, dominus!’ the sentry cried, following close behind the intruder. ‘This beggar’s been demanding to see you for all this last hour – we threatened to have him flogged... Shall I beat him now?’ He plucked a stick from his belt and raised it, sneering.

  ‘Please, excellency,’ the man crouching on the floor gasped, raising his hands. ‘Hear me out, I’m no beggar. I’m no beggar!’

  He certainly looked like a beggar. Filthy, with matted hair and ragged beard, he wore only a sleeveless tunic smeared with mud and what looked like pitch. There was a badly healed scar on his upper arm. A sword cut; Castus could see that at once.

  ‘Leave him,’ he told the sentry, and the soldier lowered his stick and stepped back with a disappointed shrug. The intruder stood upright. He was slightly bow-legged and, beneath the dirt and the straggle of beard, his face was broad and tanned.

  The raised voices had drawn others from the next room: a pair of military clerks and Diogenes, with a startled expression and a stylus tucked behind his ear. Castus studied the man a moment more, then sat on his stool and braced his chin on his fist.

  ‘Speak,’ he said.

  ‘My name’s Dolens, dominus. I’m a mariner by trade, from Dubris in Britain. Twelve days ago we sailed – five ships, with stores for the Germania garrisons, crossing the Narrow Sea to the Rhine. We were near the river mouth, maybe ten or fifteen miles south, when we saw a host of boats coming out from the land, all of them packed with armed men.’

  ‘Coming out from the land where?’ Castus demanded.

  ‘We couldn’t tell at first, dominus,’ the sailor said. ‘It was dawn, low sun to the east and the coast’s so flat there... We tried to steer away, but we had a westerly wind and they were rowing hard against it. They came up with us and boarded on both sides. Some of us tried to fight, but there were too many of them...’ He twitched his shoulder up, exhibiting his scar.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Well, dominus, they seized all five ships and towed them back into the islands between the estuaries to the south there. They had even more boats and men hidden in there, up the little creeks. Looked like we were headed for one of the bigger islands, but I managed to jump overboard and swim ashore. Ten days I’ve been wandering, dominus... They hunted me at first, but I gave them the slip quick enough, and came here as fast as I could...’

  The man’s voice choked off in a rasp. His chest was heaving, and Castus could see how weary he was, how much it was costing him to speak. He gestured to one of the slaves to bring him something to drink, and another stool.

  Once the man was seated, and had sucked down three cups of water, he appeared more composed. Castus rubbed his cheek, pondering. Within the month the first grain ships would be coming across from Britain, bringing vital food supplies for the troops on the Rhine. This was bad news indeed.

  He said nothing for a while, studying the man carefully. He had always been skilled at reading expressions, and noticing the truths that men tried to hide. Now he watched the sailor’s eyes, alert for any sign of mistrust or duplicity. There was none.

  ‘Who were they, these men who attacked you?’

  ‘Barbarians, dominus!’ Dolens cried, wiping his mouth. ‘Big hairy men! Swords and axes, spears and javelins. Beards all over them...’

  ‘Franks?’

  The sailor shrugged, raising his palms. ‘I wouldn’t know to tell the difference,’ he said.

  Castus turned away. He pictured the configuration of the Rhine mouth and the coastline to the south of it: a vague place, even to the best navigators. A mess of rivers and islands, sandbanks, forests and dunes. Most people avoided it. But it was the westernmost limit of the old Batavian lands – the very pla
ce that Bassus had recently granted to the Salii. Sour anger churned inside him. Surely this could not have happened? Surely the Salian chiefs had not repaid their worthless gift by turning to piracy? If they had, the entire supply route to the Rhine was under threat.

  ‘What were the ships carrying?’ he asked.

  ‘Horse fodder, ropes and tar and sailcloth, blankets and woollens. A small cargo of luxury stuff – preserved food, brassware, wine...’

  Castus held up his hand, before the sailor could reel off the entire cargo manifest. He needed time to think, but if the attack had happened over ten days before then he needed to act quickly.

  ‘Could you make any estimate of their numbers?’

  Dolens screwed up his mouth, frowning. ‘I saw between ten and twenty boats,’ he said. ‘Each with about thirty or forty men aboard. They had more than that though – up the creeks and around the islands, I mean.’

  Anything between a few hundred men and a thousand, Castus calculated. A large band, and if they had based themselves on one of the estuary islands they could have fortified it against attacks from upriver. Rooting them out of any stronghold there would require a considerable force.

  ‘Take this man to the baths, have his wounds dressed and give him food and a bed,’ he said. ‘Dolens – you’re not to leave the building. I’ll need to speak more to you later.’ He gestured, dismissing him, and the sailor bowed and departed.

  Once he was gone Castus got up and began pacing. His blood was quickening, and he tried to breathe slowly and deeply. As the others filed from the room he motioned for Diogenes to join him. For a long while he paced in silence, the secretary waiting patiently and tapping his pursed lips with the stylus.

  ‘What do you think?’ Castus said. ‘Is this Gaiso and his people?’

  ‘He would be the obvious choice,’ Diogenes said. ‘But it seems strange nonetheless... He would surely know that word of this would reach us, eventually, and we would act...’

  ‘Yes,’ Castus said. ‘Strange. And don’t the Franks prefer moustaches to beards? But we have to consider it.’ His mind was clearing now, moving faster – there was almost something mentally nourishing in this kind of thought, this sort of rapid decision-making.

  ‘We’ll need men,’ he said. ‘We’ll need ships. We’ll need supplies for ten days in the field.’

  ‘But if this is the Franks, we have no idea how many of them might oppose us.’

  ‘True. Make that supplies for twenty days. Alert all of our frontier garrison commanders to double their patrols and keep their men in combat readiness. Send a message to Senecio at Mogontiacum – I’ll need the Bellona, about four lighter galleys and transports to carry the troops. What day is it now?’

  ‘Dies Mercurii,’ Diogenes said. ‘Six days to the kalends of July... Which troops would you send?’

  ‘That’s the problem,’ Castus said with a hefty shrug. ‘If I draw men from the frontier garrisons I’ll leave the river defences weakened. Besides – there’s none of them I’d trust for this. I need experienced soldiers, veterans... Where are the Second Legion based now?’

  ‘Still near Treveris, I think. They could be here in six or seven days. But they’re field army troops...’

  Castus nodded curtly. ‘Then I’ll need a message to the Praetorian Prefect, sent by our fastest rider. Explain the situation and politely request half a cohort, or four centuries if he can spare them, of the Second. I’ll need them here in five days.’

  Diogenes raised an eyebrow, then made a note on his tablet.

  ‘Another message to the governor of Britannia – tell him to hold back all further shipments via the Rhine. If necessary send them through the ports on the Gallic coast, and we can bring them overland by wagon.’

  ‘Prudent,’ Diogenes muttered as he wrote.

  ‘And I want a message sent to Bonitus as well.’

  ‘The Frankish chief? Is that... wise?’

  ‘The gods alone know that,’ Castus said, rubbing his brow as he thought. ‘But I have to assume that he’s not involved in this, or things are worse than we know. Tell him these raiders are a threat both to the empire and to his people – I need his warriors to join our expedition. They have boats, and they might know those waterways; without them we’ll be blundering about in the marshes like drunks in the dark. We’ll meet him and his men at Noviomagus, tell him... You think he can read Latin, or has somebody who can?’

  ‘Maybe better to send a verbal message,’ Diogenes said. ‘I can go myself if you want.’

  Castus hid his brief smile. ‘Courageous,’ he said. ‘But no – I need you here. Send two of my clerks to Traiectum and find Bappo, the interpreter with the Sixth Stablesiani. Give him the order to take the message and read it to Bonitus himself if necessary.’

  ‘Bappo... message... Noviomagus... Franks,’ Diogenes mumbled, scratching quickly. He raised his head. ‘Who are you proposing to lead the expedition?’

  Castus paused in his pacing. He had given that no thought. It seemed obvious. ‘I’ll lead it myself,’ he said. ‘There’s nobody else I’d trust with it – Senecio’s able, but he’s a naval commander. Dexter’s a cavalryman. As for the others – Gaudiosus I wouldn’t trust out of my sight, the prefect at Tricensima’s an old woman... No, this is mine.’

  ‘Well, delegation never was one of your strengths!’ Diogenes said with a wry smile.

  ‘Would you have me send another man to do what I will not?’

  Diogenes sighed, closed the tablet and stood up. Castus was grinning as the secretary turned to go. He was embarking on a sudden and dangerous expedition, against an unknown enemy in an unknown and treacherous country. He had no accurate idea of the force arrayed against him, or which of his supposed allies he could trust. He had only a matter of days to prepare his men and take them to war. But his heart was full and his mind clear, for the first time in months.

  He laughed to himself, gazing out of the window at the fast-flowing Rhine. Evening was coming on, and already the slaves were lighting the lamps. Tomorrow his work would begin. Tiberianus would get his captives, with any luck. Not in time for the Games of Apollo, but soon enough.

  Either that, or he would be rid of Castus for ever.

  CHAPTER XVII

  Six days. Each of them a tightening ligature of stress and anxiety. Castus had stormed and stamped, sweated and sworn, sleeping only at brief intervals. He had despatched messengers to all the frontier posts, to Treveris and to the flotilla base, to Bassus at the imperial court and to the Franks beyond the Rhine. His chambers in the Praetorium had been a chaos of men coming and going, documents written and sealed, still more documents that required attention. Steadily all that was needed for the expedition had accumulated: men and ships and stores. But with every passing day Castus had felt the pressure growing greater. The sailor Dolens had told him that around thirty men had been captured with the ships; most were slaves, but not all. How many of them still lived? And there was always the terrible fear that the raiders would disperse with their plunder and be impossible to track down, or that further convoys would come across the sea and fall into their hands.

  At least, in all that time, he had seen nothing of the governor; Tiberianus had doubtless sensed the storm of military activity consuming the Praetorium, and very wisely kept clear. The islands of the sea coast were nominally part of his province, but few governors in the last four decades had assumed any responsibility over them. What happened there was a business for the military. However, Castus had seen nothing of Marcellina either, of course, and little of his son.

  Now, on the afternoon of the sixth day, he stood on the river wharf just upstream of the bridge of Colonia. It seemed, finally, that all was ready. The thought gave him a great sense of satisfaction, but a lingering worry remained. For the first time he was in sole charge of a military expedition. No senior officer stood above him to direct and guide his actions. He was the last link in the chain of command. Granted, this was no major expedition, there was no enormous
baggage train, no complex route of march. His men had only to pull downstream with the current and let the river guide them, and somewhere in that maze of water and mud before the rivers spilled into the sea they would find their enemy. But still Castus felt the jump of nervous tension in the pit of his belly, the certainty that he had overlooked something, neglected some crucial consideration, had been too simplistic in his thinking somehow. The expedition was a risk, a throw of the dice; the thought gave him a strange anxious thrill. There was a reason, he thought, that gambling had been prohibited under the emperors for so many years, and why that prohibition was so commonly flouted.

  Out in midstream the Bellona hung at anchor, stationary in the current. To either side of her were the smaller vessels, the thirty-oared single-banked galleys Pinnata and Satyra, and the two smaller eighteen-oared scout craft Lucusta and Murena. The crews were still busy aboard each ship, checking the stores and the rigging, and smearing mutton fat on the watertight leather sleeves of Bellona’s lower bank of oars. The crews were all legionaries, and each ship had shields mounted along the deck rails: bright green with the twin Capricorn emblem of Legion XXII Primigenia.

  Closer, moored along the jetties that lined the wharf, were the four big barges that would carry the rest of the troops. Flat-bottomed, blunt-prowed, each had a single huge mast and eight oars, with canopies raised over the stores piled amidships. The barges had been the last vessels to arrive, and Castus was more than glad to see them. At least, he thought, there would be no shortage of drinking water, until they reached the sea estuaries where the salt bled into the rivers.

  ‘I wish I was coming with you,’ Diogenes said, gazing across the river at the ships. It was a fine sight, in the lowering sun. ‘You’re sure you won’t reconsider?’

  ‘No,’ Castus told him. ‘I want you here, running my office. I need you to look after my household, too – I don’t have time to think about appointing a procurator. Besides,’ he said, turning with a weary smile and clapping the wiry man on the shoulder, ‘we both know your soldiering days are done!’