the veterans’ shield wall with a wooden sword at his throat and a grinning, swarthy face in his. ‘Soon have who, sonny?’ Corvinus asked conversationally.
The veterans’ ploy had been repeated by every second man along the line, and the contest collapsed in disarray with men struggling and wrestling with each other.
‘Enough!’ Falco shouted. He turned, grinning, to Valerius. ‘An honourable tie, I think.’
Valerius nodded and watched as Corvinus helped Lunaris to his feet.
‘You wouldn’t have got away with that in a proper fight,’ the duplicarius said evenly. He knew he’d been tricked, but better to be tricked on the training ground than on some heathen battlefield.
‘That’s right. We wouldn’t,’ Corvinus agreed. ‘But it wasn’t a proper fight. You fashion your tactics to beat whatever’s facing you.’
‘You’re good,’ Lunaris admitted. ‘For your age.’ He held out his hand.
Corvinus studied him suspiciously before gripping Lunaris by the forearm. ‘If we weren’t good we wouldn’t be here. Every man you see survived twenty-five years in the legion. Twenty-five years means as many battles and twice as many pointless skirmishes that are even more likely to kill you. Twenty-five years of blood and sweat and seeing your tent-mate dying by inches with his liver in his lap, and twenty-five years of dozy patrician officers like him who don’t know what they’re doing.’
Lunaris followed his gaze towards Valerius. ‘Oh, no. Not like him. Not like him at all.’
X
Two days before the dinner at Lucullus’s villa, Valerius visited the daily market beside Colonia’s Forum. It was here the local farmers brought their surplus and the craftsmen who plied their trade in the workshops on the hill to the west of the town came to sell their wares. Out of curiosity he had walked up the hill and found a bustling place of sparks and smoke, curious metallic smells and the clang of blacksmiths’ hammers. Among them he found Corvinus, which surprised him, for this was a place of artisans and the goldsmith now counted among Colonia’s elite. But the Twentieth’s former armourer explained: ‘I have my shop in Colonia, but our charter doesn’t allow manufacture within the walls.’ He pointed to a nearby smith’s glowing forge. ‘Too much risk of fire. The things I sell have to be made somewhere, so I set up my workshop here. I have slaves, of course, but I keep my hand in, and I do the special commissions myself.’
The memory of the encounter started a thought in Valerius’s mind, but he decided to leave it for another day. Now he walked among the stalls of vegetables, hanging joints of meat, bulging sacks of barley and spelt, arrays of duck and hen eggs, perhaps fresh and perhaps not, and fish silver-bright from the river and the sea, taking in the sights and pungent scents of home-grown herbs and exotic imported spices and ignoring the pleas and flattery of the vendors. For a while he carefully studied a basket of scrawny chickens, clucking and fussing among their straw, but none was quite right. The sound of bleating drew him. Perhaps? When he reached the farmer’s pen, he cursed himself for a fool. Of course, there would be no lambs at this season of the year. He imagined leading a ewe on a rope through the streets. No, it wouldn’t do. He returned to the chickens.
‘I’ll have the biggest one, with the white patch on its wing.’
He carried the squawking bird by the legs, its wings flapping impotently, along the main street until he reached the temple gates. Today a queue stretched from the temple steps and he had to wait his turn behind a wrinkled, elderly woman with a white scroll and a small leather bag clutched tightly to her chest. It was several minutes before she stood before the priest at a stone altar set in front of the marble stairway. The transaction should have been private, but the woman had a loud voice that reminded Valerius of the chicken’s squawking and he couldn’t help but overhear.
‘I wish the god to place this curse on whoever stole my sheets when they were drying. It was my neighbour, Poppaea, I’m sure, but I will know for certain when her feet and her hands turn black, the thieving bitch. In pursuance of my petition I leave this offering.’ The priest took the leather bag, opened it and studied the contents before accepting the scroll with a curt nod. The woman bowed and walked away, muttering to herself.
Valerius took his place at the altar while the priest noted something on a waxed writing block. Despite the authority with which he’d dealt with the woman and the earlier supplicants, the priest was little more than a boy, with narrow, pinched features and a nose that marked him out as Roman. At first Valerius was puzzled, but as he waited — a little longer than he needed to — he realized that the people who actually operated and managed the cult of Claudius were unlikely to be major benefactors like Lucullus. Every organization needed its fetchers and carriers, and he recognized one before him.
He coughed, and the priest looked up as if only just noticing his presence. Valerius wore a simple tunic over his braccae and he knew he’d been mistaken for an off-duty legionary or perhaps one of the farmers in town for the market.
‘I wish to make a sacrifice to the god,’ he said, holding out the chicken.
‘That?’ the boy asked, frowning.
‘Yes, that,’ Valerius agreed, aware of growing restlessness behind him.
The boy studied the chicken, and Valerius wondered if he had ever conducted a sacrifice. Probably the task was normally carried out by the more experienced priests.
‘Perhaps you might like some help?’ he ventured.
The boy looked at him seriously, then back to the chicken. ‘Oh, no.’ He paused. ‘Will you require an augury?’
Valerius thought for a second. Did he really believe this child had the gift? He was almost certainly wasting his money. Still, why had he come here, if not to find out whether the girl was part of his future?
‘How much?’ he asked, and was quoted a price that made his purse squeal in protest. At these rates the Temple of Claudius must be the most profitable enterprise in Britain. He handed over a silver denarius, which the boy placed in a basket beneath the altar, then the chicken, which the young priest expertly held down with one hand while reaching into the basket with the other and producing a lethal-looking house knife. With a flick of his wrist he slit the bird’s throat. The chicken jerked and its wings fluttered in an involuntary spasm. The boy studied its dying movements until it went still, then, with another expert flick of the blade, made a long cut in its belly and allowed the inner parts to spill on to the marble surface.
Valerius stared at the remains of the chicken but all he saw was a heap of feathers and a mess of entrails and watery blood. The priest used the point of the knife to move a curling clump of guts to one side and let out a prolonged sigh as he uncovered the liver. He sighed again as he found the gall bladder, which he studied intently. Valerius leaned closer as the signs were explained. ‘The path you follow is not the one you wish to tread,’ the boy said cautiously. ‘Yet there are many ways to reach the destination you seek. Not all are straightforward, but each, in its own fashion, will take you where you want to go.’ He paused, studying the entrails more closely still while Valerius attempted to decipher the message he was being given. Was the boy talking about his pursuit of the girl, or the path that would take him back to Rome against his will? Or both? Or neither? He raised his head to find the priest studying him, a curious look in his dark eyes. ‘You may face a great challenge, or you may turn away from it. Your fate is tied to that decision. It is not clear, but I believe you have much to gain but more to lose if you continue along the road you have chosen.’ He reached into the basket and his hand came out with the silver denarius. ‘Here. I have told you nothing you did not know.’
Valerius shook his head. ‘No. Keep it… for yourself if not for the temple.’
As he walked away deep in thought, he looked back to see the priest staring at him, ignoring the line of petitioners waiting to avail themselves of his services.
The villa of Lucullus was set high on the slope opposite Colonia and about a mile to the west of the city. It lay at the centre of his ‘estate’, which as far as Valerius could see consisted simply of another tract of British farmland, dotted randomly with patches of forest and the flea-infested, thatched roundhouses the tribesmen lived in. A Roman villa would have been identified by an ostentatious gateway and landscaped gardens, but he had only been able to find his way here because of the precise directions Falco had provided, passing through and by another dozen farms on the way. At first sight the villa was a disappointment: a simple, single-storey structure, with white walls, shuttered windows and a red-tiled roof — it could have been home to any subsistence farmer on the shores of the Mediterranean. Still, he approached along the narrow, hedged trackway with his heart thumping against his
