Black Salamander

by Marilyn Todd

  In short, Claudia thought, their guards are down.

  The hide across the porch had been drawn back, the oak door flung open to reveal the reason for the incredible height of the roundhouse. A central circular hearth, piled high with fragrant fir ash, smouldered gently to smoke a multitude of hams, tongues and sausages strung from a crossbeam. Under the eaves of this single-roomed, windowless building, a ewe with long arching horns and two lambs dozed happily, as though gatherings on this scale happened every day, while two doves strutted and cooed on the thatch.

  ‘I don’t believe it!’ The bubbly blonde giggled, head to head with the slipper-maker’s wife. ‘She said that?’

  Gossip. A sure sign everything’s on track.

  Whistling under his breath, the tubby priest set up an altar to the Lares, pouring them a libation of spring water and beer in thanks for their protection of the travellers, and just to make sure they got the message, Clemens scattered meadow rue and scabious, honesty and orchids across the altar stone.

  Iliona was belting out a bright little number, her ankle bracelets and bangles a jaunty backing group, as she followed the path through the birches, watched by Titus whose smile, for once, didn’t seem ambiguous, just proud.

  ‘Talk about opposites.’ Somewhere along the line Orbilio had sidled up.

  ‘Titus and Iliona? Nonsense.’ They complement one another wonderfully, each finding in the other a matchless counterpart. ‘It works,’ Claudia told him (men! Fancy needing to have this explained to them!), ‘because she is of the sea and he the land. She is light and bright and sunny, a product of broad skies and barren hills, of rolling endless seas, whereas Titus hails from dark, wooded landscapes, which are reflected in his repressed and cautious attitudes.’

  ‘In fact, a perfect merchant in the making.’

  ‘A perfect partnership.’ Claudia corrected him, waving a cautionary finger. ‘I’ll bet you a quernstone to a quadran that if purchasers are not swayed by Titus’s logic, Iliona’s charms tip the balance.’

  ‘But Titus is so moral.’ Orbilio laughed. ‘Is any man more prudent, more provident that he?’

  Claudia found herself laughing, too. ‘Exactly my point, Hotshot. He may be provident, but our Cretan lovely will look to Providence for taking care of the future. I defy you to tell me there’s a more potent combination?’

  ‘I shall,’ he said, tapping the tip of his forefinger on the tip of her nose, ‘hold you to that on our wedding day. But in the meantime, I have an Empire to save. Do excuse me.’

  Claudia laughed, watching him lope off along the track in the direction of the village. Sometimes, Marcus Cornelius, sometimes I can almost believe that I like you.

  Volso was huddled over his charts, muttering about suns in this, moons in that, cusps all over the place, trying to determine whether the calculations were on target for when the Dog Star starts to rise. Apparently this made a difference, if only Claudia suspected, to his income.

  ‘Drusilla? Where are you, poppet?’ Overcome with the joys of freedom, neither of them had come ‘home’ to the roundhouse, and the last time she had seen the cat, it had been with a thin, hairless tail hanging out the side of her mouth. Well, catching them is one thing. Leaving mangled mice on a girl’s bedding is another. ‘Drusilla?’

  ‘Hrrrrow.’

  Good grief, what was she doing on the roof? Then Claudia noticed the cat, cross-eyed to start with, was experiencing considerable problems in deciding which of the two doves to chase. Both eyes seemed fixed on both birds.

  Laughing, as she craned her neck to watch the antics on the thatch, her heel caught and suddenly Claudia was tumbling backwards over someone else’s belongings. Whoops! The heap of armour went sprawling, but no one seemed to notice, and certainly Theo wasn’t around to apologize to. In fact, she thought she’d seen him take his towel towards the spring just a few minutes previously.

  What a mess! With downturned mouth, she leaned down to re-stack the heap—and then it happened.

  Memories leapt in.

  Her father, his features after so many years reduced to a haze, she suddenly caught the smell of him, warm and nutmeggy, and felt the bristles of his beard against her cheek. She swallowed at the unexpectedness, tried to fight this fierce tidal wave of emotion. He, too, had been attached to the army, a lowly orderly admittedly, but she’d learned so much about military campaigns from him and now absurd, inconsequential items skipped along the tunnel of her memory. His mimicking of the trumpeter who’d sound the call ‘Strike Camp!’ The way he showed her how to route march, the pair of them left-righting down the stinking slumland alleys, one little soldier in the shadow of the real one, dwarfed by crumbling tenements which stank of raw sewage and boiled turnips and which relied for their water on one erratic standpipe or a surly water carrier. A lump rose in her throat. So many times she’d seen Theo in full uniform, why now? Why did it all flood back at this moment? Eyes misted, hot and salty, as she ran a loving hand over the gleaming helmet, the iron-shod boots, the heavy cloak Theo used for a pillow, the yellow deerskin pouch he kept under it…

  Her father, his mannerisms, even the stinking slums vanished like a pricked bubble. Gone. Fast. Without trace. And try as she might, by screwing up her fists and eyes, Claudia could not re-capture those golden, precious, carefree moments. The uniform, the weaponry, the armour had become inanimate again. Objects. Detached. Without soul, without life, without meaning. Just objects. Mother of Mars, she hated them for that, but more, she hated the little yellow eye which peeked out from the red woollen cloak, because it had taken her father away from her.

  Claudia kicked back the corner she’d disturbed and spun away.

  XVIII

  In Rome, military dispatches were flooding in, the message in each one identical in flavour, if not in actual content. Dissidents were wreaking havoc with their guerrilla raids along the border. East of Trier, a stable block had been burned to the ground, the horses perishing inside. Fires had been lit under two separate garrison gates, and attempts had been made to burn crossings on the Rhine, Danube and Moselle. Sentries were being picked off with splendid regularity, supply wagons ran the gauntlet of ambush and in some cases the rivers which supplied the troops were poisoned upstream, overloading the military hospitals.

  ‘Bloody backshooters,’ a retired legate cried. ‘Why don’t they fight like men, the bloody cowards!’

  But outraged as he was, he understood the tactics and, worse, could see they were successful. Random strikes, fast and unpredictable, meant no soldier dare let up his vigil, the Roman army was becoming tired and dispirited. They could not be everywhere at once. They could not see their enemy. They did not know who he was.

  Civilian suppliers grew fearful of their safety. Patrols were increased, spreading troops ever thinner. Legions were divided first into cohorts, then cohorts into centuries. Intelligence netted next to nothing. Petty chieftains were marched in for questioning, which only undermined the diplomatic efforts so assiduously laid earlier, with the unhappy result that the tribes, far from assisting their Roman administrators, now prevaricated, content to watch the outcome from the sidelines. They, too, were not sure who was orchestrating the raids, but in them they saw the glimmer of regaining a long-lost independence.

  The chiefs would not be rushed.

  The situation worsened.

  *

  In Vesontio, proud and splendid, protected as she was by the great loop in the River Doubs and sheltered by the mountain soaring upwards at her back, street sweepers brushed away the debris of yesterday’s celebrations and agreed they’d never seen so much litter in their lives. Eggshells, pie crusts, melon pips and carrot tops were pushed into barrows, along with broken combs, false teeth, pottery shards and lost toys, while an army of slaves with buckets and shovels scooped up what the gentry quaintly called mule apples. Dogs had already disposed of the meat bones.

  ‘Aye, but it was worth it,’ a weathered Gaul called across the Forum. ‘Never seen a show to mat
ch it in me life!’

  His companion paused to lean on his heather broom and wipe his brow with the back of his hand. ‘Handsome,’ he agreed. ‘Right handsome,’ and bent down to extricate a mussel shell which had become lodged between the paving stones. He’d never seen a mussel shell before. All the way from the coast they’d fetched them for yesterday’s festivities. The gutter sweeper slipped it inside his shirt to take home for his daughter.

  ‘Is it true,’ he called across, ‘that there was frozen puddings on the go at last night’s banquet?’

  ‘Not half!’ His friend laughed, tapping his broom. ‘A mate of mine was one of them sent to bring the snow down from the Alps, and watched it get mashed with flour, cherries and sweet white wine. But only for the nobility, mind. All us poor buggers get is the sodding stones to clear away.’ With reluctance he resumed his sweeping, his mind wandering back over the pageant.

  What a spectacle. Riverboats decked out with banners, garlands draped from every building, music on every street corner and, oh my word, those horses which led the parade! Every one white as bloody marble, caparisoned in blue and gold and silver. Elephants there was, camels, yellow beasts with long necks (giraffes was they called?), and free beer. Wine if you wanted it, but he was a Celt and didn’t go for that nancy-boy stuff. My, there was trumpets, fanfares, dark-skinned dancers wearing saucy feather skirts and very little else, acrobats, jugglers and a sorcerer who magicked coloured smoke from fire and caused explosions loud enough to leave you deaf for days.

  Aye, he was a simple man, the gutter cleaner, but in his opinion it was a smart move, building a temple here in the capital to these Castor and Pollux blokes. Not because they symbolized peace and harmony between Roman and Sequani. Rather, he felt, because Pollux had a distinctly Celtic ring about it. Hadn’t every king of note had a name ending with an X? Oh yes, only good could come of this.

  *

  The prefect charged with organizing yesterday’s spectacular was of a similar opinion, and despite his thumping hangover and the fact that his wife had got drunk again and taken all her clothes off in the middle of the banquet, by and large, everything had gone swimmingly, he thought. The processions and the inauguration ceremony reflected weeks of painstaking rehearsal, not a foot out of place anywhere, although the prefect had been a little concerned when the elephant peed over one of the horn players. However, apart from one extra honk, albeit high-pitched and off-key, the musician seemed to take it in his stride, and it was—the prefect smiled at his own joke—the only sour note in the proceedings. (His wife’s conduct aside.)

  In manly defiance of the hammering inside his bruised and battered skull, he summoned his secretary.

  ‘Have those silly arses turned up yet?’ he demanded.

  ‘Um, now which exactly might those be, sir?’

  ‘The bloody idiots who got themselves lost, took some local byway and then couldn’t turn back because the bloody road had gone.’

  ‘Ah, the delegation! No, sir, they haven’t arrived.’

  ‘Right.’ The prefect sighed. ‘Send a message to the barracks, tell the commander to dispatch thirty men to meet them on the road and escort—’

  ‘You’ve already put that into practice, sir. Two days ago. Only with just a skeleton guard remaining in Vesontio, they could only spare us eight.’

  ‘Croesus, so they could.’ In the last final, frantic hours of the build-up to the ceremony the troubles to the north had completely slipped his mind and he thanked Jupiter Almighty there was no bloody dissension among the Sequani. ‘But no report from the legionaries?’ He’d forgotten about those bloody stragglers, too. Holy Neptune, if anything happened to those wretched civilians, it would be his neck on the line and his alone. The governor in charge of the province had made that abundantly clear.

  ‘No report so far, sir.’

  The prefect ground his teeth. ‘Be sure the commander takes careful note of the names of those three soldiers who took it upon themselves to show our citizens the scenic route,’ he snarled. ‘Theodorus, wasn’t it?’ He could not recall the other two. ‘Tell him they’re to be posted to the hottest, driest, ugliest part of the Libyan desert for the next ten years, and after that they can spend another ten serving in the coldest, wettest, ugliest part of Pannonia. Together. All of them.’

  Every day he wanted those three incompetents to see the misery in each other’s faces and remember exactly why there were there.

  ‘Morons,’ he muttered. ‘I’m sent to a place manned by bloody morons.’

  Goddammit, he’d be glad to get his carcass back to Rome, away from these long winters, the bloody snow and cold. Maybe then his wife would have more to occupy her mind than a bloody wine jug. About to dismiss his secretary, the prefect suddenly realized he hadn’t seen her this morning. She deserved a bloody good spanking for her outrageous behaviour last night.

  ‘You haven’t seen the silly bitch, have you?’ he bellowed.

  ‘Your wife, sir?’ The secretary coloured, and looked away. Sweet Janus. Did the master suspect she’d slept in his truckle bed last night? (Or more accurately, hadn’t!) ‘No, sir,’ he said apologetically. ‘Not today.’

  *

  Deep in the forest one day’s march south-east of Vesontio, where the landscape was more rolling, the scenery more gentle on the eye, the bloodied corpses of eight men, stripped of their weaponry and armour but still in military uniform, were rolled into a single shallow grave.

  The grave was shorter than might have been expected.

  On account of the fact that each body was missing its head.

  XIX

  ‘We must move through the woods,’ Arcas said, tightening the saddle strap on his stocky red and white horse. ‘It’s too dangerous to travel by road.’

  ‘How can it possibly be dangerous?’ Maria snorted. ‘The Helvetii are miles away, aren’t they?’ Behind her, Dexter whimpered that he thought he was getting a migraine.

  ‘Those ugly bastards know better than to set foot over the river.’ The Silver Fox passed the flat of his hand across his windpipe in a cut-throat gesture to emphasize his point. ‘It’s Sequani loyalists we want to avoid.’ He patted the stallion on its solid, rotund rump then turned his attention to his pair of pack horses.

  ‘Why should we want to do that?’ Titus looked up from where he was grinding laudanum in a mortar. ‘They’re—you’re our allies.’

  ‘You haven’t heard?’ Arcas continued to ram the hams, sausages and smoked tongues he’d cut down from his rafters into a hessian sack. ‘The Treveri are in rebellion. Fires, riots, sabotage, murder, ambush, you name it, they’re putting it in practice.’

  ‘Maybe so, but they’re doing it a hundred miles north of here.’ In the absence of wine, Titus stirred beer into the sticky sweet laudanum before measuring it into two cups to dose the injured drivers. Claudia noticed that the intervals between medication were growing increasingly shorter.

  ‘Seventy,’ the trapper corrected, stuffing a second sack with vegetables. ‘But word is, the legions are worried. Troops have been sent from Vesontio to crush the rebellion and, flying the colours of our ancient insignia, the Spider is crawling out of his web.’

  ‘I don’t like spiders,’ Dexter muttered. ‘Arachnophobia, y’know.’

  ‘You wouldn’t like this one, that’s for sure.’ Arcas snorted, knotting the sacks and throwing them over the first horse. ‘He gets his nickname from the web he casts, drawing in every dissident Sequani because, strange as it seems,’ he shot Theo a sharp glance, ‘not everyone adores their Roman tax collectors.’ He paused to check the knots. ‘When the Treveri started playing up, the Spider swung his underground army into action. You won’t mistake them when you see them. They fly the gold globe in a circle of red. Riches through blood, that’s their motto.’

  Again Claudia noticed that Orbilio had contributed nothing, content, it seemed, to assist Hanno load the pack mules. Claudia caught his glance and with one raised eyebrow signalled have-you-heard-of-any-Sp
ider? To which the reply was a subtle news-to-me facial twitch. But the keenness of his eye also said he didn’t disbelieve the Silver Fox.

  ‘Rebel, did you say?’ Maria asked. ‘I don’t believe a word of it! We’ve never heard of any revolutionaries terrorizing the area, have we, Theodorus?’

  The soldier, buffing up his helmet with his sleeve, was forced to agree with her for once. ‘Military intelligence has never mentioned him,’ he said, though his voice made it plain that just because this was fresh, it wasn’t necessarily untrue.

  ‘I say we take our chances with the road,’ Maria said, leaving no doubt that she considered this backwoods route a ploy to justify the Silver Fox’s exorbitant fee.

  ‘Me, too,’ Volso cried. ‘We’ve lost enough time as it is.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ the slipper-maker whined. ‘This man is our guide, we either trust him or we don’t.’

  ‘There’s thirty-four of us,’ the glass-blower reminded them, ‘no ragbag bandit’s going to tackle that. Not with the army in Vesontio.’

  ‘What army?’ Titus said. ‘You heard him, it’s a skeleton force.’

  ‘STOP.’ Arcas held up both hands and made a slashing motion. ‘That’s enough, all of you. I am not in your Senate, listening while you debate from dusk till dawn, neither am I some servant at your beck and call. Bicker all you wish, but be warned.’ He reached for a pitcher and with his dagger jabbed a small hole near the bottom. Beer gushed out in ugly, noisy spurts. ‘I leave when this is empty,’ he said, striding off to his roundhouse. ‘Either through the woods or on the road, the choice is yours, but decide quickly.’

  ‘Well,’ Maria said.

  ‘Well?’ Titus asked.

  ‘A vote,’ Theo sighed. ‘Who’s for the main road? Sixteen. So who’s for taking Arcas’s route? Sixteen.’ A flash of annoyance crossed his freckled face. ‘Who hasn’t voted? Oh.’ He gave a shamefaced laugh. ‘Me. Well, I feel we should go with the guide. Seventeen to sixteen, we follow the Fox’s trail.’