If Julianus had struck Fabatus across the face, the great man could not have insulted his junior more pointedly. Not only had Speratus been spared—this was in fact a promotion, for he was put in command of a larger, longer-established fort, situated comfortably farther from the frontier.
Speratus felt as if Theseus snatched him from the path of the Minotaur.
“All these reports suggest wider causes for this disaster,” Marcus Julianus spoke on. “But it saves a lot of time, trouble, papyrus, and ink if we heap it all on the head of one man, does it not? That fort was to have been reinforced with a cohort of Batavian cavalry. But our praefect at Aquae Mattiaci detained them for four days so he could employ them in an aurochs hunt. And I don’t see it recorded anywhere that this man, Speratus, was awarded both a Civic Crown and a Mural Crown, though this information is readily at hand in this fortress’s archives—perhaps an omission intended to make it easier to give him that final push down to Hades?”
“Men have called you an overeducated intellectual bully, Julianus,” the gnomish Blaesus broke in with a cultured smile, “and I’m trying very hard not to agree with them.”
“Yet you’ve no reproving words for Fabatus,” Julianus retorted, “who just threatened our witness with death. The Emperor has more respect than you two for the ordinary soldier of the ranks. Fabatus, I will make known my displeasure at your conduct.”
Fabatus withdrew into wounded silence, dazed at how abruptly his rising fortunes had begun to sink back into the muck. To be admonished by such a man meant the certain ruin of any chance of early advancement.
Speratus felt his appreciation of this man burgeoning into adoration.
“Furthermore,” Julianus continued, “I see signs that this attack was anomalous; there’s no evidence this presages a larger rebellion—”
“Then, Julianus, you see what you wish to see!” Blaesus struck out then. “Your bias for peace is well-known by all. Conscription’s become near impossible out here, because the natives are quoting from your discourses against it—such is the mischief wrought by philosophers. And as ever you speak this Chattian enemy’s cause with such energy and passion that it calls your motives to question!” This was a common charge made by Julianus’s enemies, who claimed that the outlandish barbarian woman whom this man had taken into his household unduly influenced him to speak against the use of harsh measures against her tribe.
“My ‘energy and passion,’ as you call it, I hope serves only justice,” Julianus responded amiably. “First, consider the man: Witgern is afflicted with a sickness his fellow tribesmen call the ‘wolf madness’; even his own people keep off from him. None joined him in this raid. Your ‘general revolt’ seems undermanned. Your ‘great effort to push us back to the Rhenus’ consisted of a single frantic rush by three hundred rogues maddened with wolf beer. The loyal Chattian chiefs have condemned his attack in their native assembly.
“And,” Julianus continued on, “no one’s even asked why he struck this fort. Its brother forts to the east were not so well fortified. I think Witgern had some other purpose, still obscure to us.”
Julianus was silent for a moment, scanning the report. “I see you’ve neglected to ask our good Firmius Speratus if he observed any looting.”
“Five other witnesses have said no—is that not enough for you?” Blaesus said with contempt.
“I did see looting, my Lord,” Speratus said, savoring the annoyance this caused Blaesus. “Witgern thieved a barbarian sword, said to once have belonged to that celebrated Chattian chieftain of the generation before, Baldemar.”
The governor was clearly embarrassed he had not asked this question. But Blaesus was of a mind to lock horns until he wore an opponent down; to him, debate was more physical exercise than a test of logic. “So,” he said, “they’ve one more sword in their possession than we thought, Julianus. Have you found the golden fleece?”
“In fact, we have,” Julianus replied, smiling easily. “Gentlemen, we need investigate no further. Baldemar’s sword is for them a treasure of immense sacred significance. They believe the great chief’s spirit lives on in its blade. For many years, they’ve avidly sought it. Having it in foreign hands—I can only compare it to the horror each of you would feel, should an enemy seize one of our Eagles.”
“That’s an insolent comparison, Julianus, if not outright sacrilegious!” Blaesus spat out.
“I’m trusting the gods to be more indulgent than you,” Julianus replied with an amused smile. “And then there’s this, which comes to me now. If you subtract nine days from the day of that attack—which is when Witgern’s men began their wolf rites—it’s the anniversary of Baldemar’s death. Doubtless, on the old chief’s death day, they made a vow. When they attacked the fort, they fulfilled that vow. Therefore, I hold a military response would be a sadly unnecessary overreaction to this minor—”
“They carried swords, in contradiction to the ban! You’re saying we should do nothing?”
“If you need employment for that busy mind, Blaesus,” said Julianus, showing the first signs of irritation, “find the source of the silver coin flowing across the frontier. That’s how Witgern armed himself. As I’ve maintained again and again, their hostility’s not principally aimed at us in these times, but at the Cheruscan tribe to their north.”
“Savages busy killing off other savages instead of harassing us—it’s much to our advantage, Blaesus,” the governor, Maximus, added. Only Speratus caught the faint wince of distaste those words brought to Marcus Julianus’s face—Julianus did not like that line of reasoning.
“Surely a punitive expedition should be launched!”
“I think not,” Julianus replied. “They don’t have a history of paying much attention to our punitive expeditions—historically, it has almost seemed to strengthen them, like the pruning of vines. I’ve never believed in the efficiency of rule by terror. For fear vanishes, soon as you depart, and hatred’s only redoubled. I hold it’s far better to win a nation to us through just dealings, and through hewing to our promises.” He was silent a moment, as he calmly regarded each man in turn. “I have no more to say.”
“You’re too tricky for me, Julianus,” Blaesus said then, “but I know a peacemonger when I hear one. Enter into the record that I don’t agree with Marcus Julianus. If these attacks continue, you can appeal to the Emperor, and answer to the families of the dead.”
Now everyone looked expectantly at Maximus, to see what course of action the governor would recommend, for this was legally his jurisdiction—though all knew who the true governor was, when Julianus was present.
“No punitive expedition,” Maximus decreed. “We’ll send a strong warning to the Chattian Assembly. And we’ll put the Chattian hostages to death. That should satisfy the Palace’s demand for justice.”
As Julianus emerged the victor, Blaesus seemed as amazed as if he’d witnessed a sorcerer’s trick. A tribe that had burned a fort and slain most of its men, using swords it was not supposed to possess, was to suffer little more punishment than a warning.
“Might I now speak to the centurion Firmius Speratus in private?” Julianus asked then.
Maximus was mildly surprised at this. “The recorders, too, Julianus?”
“Yes, if you’ll allow. I have a message to give this man, from his family. As it’s of a disturbing nature, it wouldn’t be proper to do so in front of us all.”
When they were alone, Speratus asked with urgency, “My Lord, what of my family?”
“Forgive me, that was but a ruse so we could have private words.”
Speratus put his head into his hands as he felt a great upsurge of relief.
“I am your lifelong servant, Marcus Julianus,” the centurion said at last. “I owe a debt to you that I’m not sure I can repay in this life. Ask what you will, I’ll withhold nothing from you.”
“You know more than you cared to speak aloud before those men. Why do you think Witgern came for the old chief’s sword?”
<
br /> “Out there they say Baldemar is still alive. Reports keep coming from the hide traders who come back from the West Forest, where his old widow lives on. Something’s certainly afoot. I wouldn’t say it before; I didn’t want to throw weight to their side, against you. There’s a tale to which I gave scant credence at the time, that Baldemar’s ghost commanded Witgern to reclaim his sword, and—”
“Does this ghost urge insurrection against Rome?”
“No. All I hear agrees with you; it’s that plundering Cheruscan chief called Chariomer they’re arming against, not us. They believe they face extinction. But the troubling bit of it is—” He came to a full stop.
“You must say it. By the ghost of Aeneas I swear I’ll not let you be harmed in any way.”
“—it’s said Baldemar won’t lay quiet until Witgern puts Baldemar’s sword into the hands of—” Sharp unease contracted his features.
“Nemesis! Enough,” Marcus Julianus said quickly, turning away. “I know who you mean.” Into the hands of his only living child, his daughter. Who carried it before. Auriane.
Though Julianus expected it, still he felt the ground wrench beneath him. The logic of it closed about him—Of course they would be engineering her return. Her people, once again, are threatened on every side. And they would rally around her like no other. His features remained composed; Speratus did not guess his torment. But he felt a sick dread that belonged in harsher times, that didn’t fit the more sedate world he inhabited now. For Auriane’s sake she must never know this. Her sense of duty to her people would compel her to go back. Gods forgive me, I cannot have it. They ask too much of her. She deserves safety and rest. She’s a matron of a villa now, with children . . .
“I fear I must put that declaration of lifelong servitude to the test at once,” Julianus said. “You will speak of this matter to no one. No matter what his field of authority, or his rank. If you would repay me, let it be in the coin of your silence.”
“You delivered me from ruin,” Speratus replied with fervor. “My allegiance is to you. I’ll tell no one. Shall I oath it on our Lord’s image?” He nodded toward the bronze bust of Trajan.
“Your word’s as good as an oath.”
As they rose to depart, Speratus brushed against a drop cloth covering a newly commissioned portrait bust of the governor, Maximus. As it fell away, Julianus saw something that should not be there—a listening hole, drilled close to the floor. He became coldly alert.
That spy-hole had not been there earlier this afternoon—he’d had this room freshly inspected when he’d learned the inquiry would take place here. His own agents regularly re-mapped all the listening holes in this Fortress. Julianus nodded a calm farewell to Speratus. But once he was outside, in the colonnade, he discreetly looked into the unlit adjacent chamber.
It was empty. But had it been, moments before?
And what was that?—On the floor, in the triangle of light projecting into the chamber—a stylus, and a broken bit of the leather thong that had attached it to its wax tablet. Had someone exited in such haste, he dropped it?
A flash of movement caught his eye. One hundred paces ahead, someone was running. The slender figure of a boy clad in a Gallic farmer’s short leather cape whipped round a left-angle turn in the colonnade. Pursuit was out of the question: The boy was too far off, and there were a thousand hidden nooks in this fortress into which an agile lad could vanish. Anyway, it was better that whoever had spied upon him didn’t know he knew—and he was far from alone. Clerks, accountants, and junior officers hurried past, and Blaesus was lingering in the gardens, facing him as he stood in close conversation with one of the senior tribunes.
All at once Julianus was oblivious to the bright sun of noon, the hurrying slave on some urgent errand who nearly collided with him, the stern splendor of the columned facade of the Presidium, just ahead.
Would Maximus set a spy on me? Impossible. He’d need to ask my advice before he did it. He got his governorship because of me. And he’s not of a nature to nurse secret hurts.
And what of that bloated serpent Blaesus, watching me now, while pretending not to? He’s never forgiven me for bringing him to prosecution after he wrung dry with creative taxation that unsuspecting province entrusted to his governance. But he’s not my equal in power and favor—he’d have to consider that any accusation he hurled at me might rebound back on himself.
The Palace?
Julianus had no illusions; despite Trajan’s mildness, his power was as absolute as Domitian’s had been, and the specter of violent replacement haunted all rulers, particularly when they were—as Trajan was now—preparing to set out on a distant conquest that could absent them from their capital for years. Julianus knew well that suspicions’ fires, if fueled by some act of his, would burn doubly bright. For the Emperor was one of a small circle of men who knew for certain that Marcus Julianus’s was the invisible hand behind the assassination of the tyrant Domitian, whose death had ushered in the milder reign of the Emperor Nerva, who had, in turn, adopted Trajan, to assure a smooth succession. The thought would linger in any ruler’s mind: The man who engineered such a change of rulers once is capable of doing it again.
He was darkly troubled as he imagined an imperial agent’s report:
After Julianus tricked the others into leaving the room by lying about his purpose, he gathered intelligence about the plans of our enemy, which he never divulged to the Council. He then caused this Speratus to pledge silence to him, as though the man owed greater allegiance to Julianus than to his Emperor and Lord.
The moment would thrive hauntingly at the edges of consciousness in the days to come.
Chapter 4
Auriane held grimly to Arria Juliana’s hands, as though to keep her child on earth. Arria fought to hold fast to her nine years; each struggling breath was a hand grasping for purchase on a cliff, staving off a plummet into the world of the shades. The child lay on a lectus within the smothering herbal darkness of the villa’s sick chamber. Auriane thought of the sad little stand of tilted gravestones alongside the river, marking the brief lives of dozens of the tenant farmers’ children, all clustered about Arria’s age—a crop of small green shoots snipped short. Children must glide through Hel’s realm again and again before they attained the relative safety of adulthood. It had always been so. She took a clay pot of steaming medicine and pressed its bird-beak spout to Arria’s dry lips. Auriane had prepared the mixture herself, praying to the Ancestresses while pouring boiling water over leaves of holly, queen-of-the-meadow, and bark of white willow, plants she and Avenahar had collected together while roaming the virgin woodland about the villa. It was helping little.
Not knowing what prompted her, Auriane removed the black leather amulet she wore about her neck always, and placed it on Arria Juliana’s breast. In one moment it seemed a rash thing to do. The amulet’s power—like the seeress Ramis, who’d given it to her—was unpredictable. It contained earth from the holiest of wells, where Fria, goddess-mother of men, often showed herself to the people; Auriane sometimes thought the amulet a sort of hallowed leash by which the baleful old woman meant to draw her onto the oracular path. Ramis wanted more than that, Auriane darkly suspected, so much more that her mind vigorously pushed the knowledge back into darkness. She wants me to take her place. But Auriane did not count herself great-souled enough; all the seeresses of the tribes of Germania called this woman mistress.
She thought it impious to take the amulet off—but perhaps its earth-born holiness could heal.
Arria’s dark, thick lashes didn’t stir at the touch of the dread thing.
Avenahar was standing expectantly in the chamber door, letter in hand, showing unusual restraint as she waited for her mother to notice her. When Auriane saw that it bore Marcus Julianus’s seal, she left Arria with a favorite maidservant, a sturdy young bloom called Brico, born of the Treveran tribe, the quiet Celtic people who’d lived along the Mosella before the coming of Rome. Brico was with child by th
e steward Demaratos and didn’t know that Auriane knew—but that was a problem for another day.
In the passage outside the sick chamber, Auriane and Avenahar read the letter together, after closing the short passage’s connecting doors for privacy. Avenahar was a faster reader, having been taught in youth; she read first of Witgern’s attack.
She gave a yelp of joy.
“Avenahar! Show a care for your sister.”
Avenahar whispered in Chattian, “It’s a sign of hope.”
“It’s a sign of rash stupidity,” Auriane answered in their tongue. “All Witgern won us was the murder of the hostages.”
“He sprang on them like prey.”
“He’ll start a war.”
“No, read further, Father stopped it. Witgern got to keep his victory.” Avenahar then turned to look at her mother, as if at a holy thing. “Mother . . . you named correctly the fort, the day, and the hour.”
Auriane regretted having told Avenahar of the prediction she’d given to Marcus. “Never mind, I can’t think of that now.”
“And you did it without the trance songs—a seeress needs songs to aid her. You just did it. This is a prodigy. You even named the praefect . . . this cognomen ‘Speratus’ is the same word that means ‘hoped for’ in the Roman tongue.”
“Enough. I forbid you to speak on it more.”
Before Avenahar came to the end of the passage, she turned and looked beseechingly at her mother. “How long can you deny what you are?”
“Enough!”
As Auriane returned to Arria’s room, she felt her whole spirit stiffening in resistance. She sensed a vaulted door swinging open to darkness, revealing a pale, beckoning hand. If she truly possessed such power to see what comes, it belonged to her people—and not returning to them was much like thieving it from them. It was one more sign the Fates required the impossible of her—that she go home and minister to her people.
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