XIV
Five days before the festival of Armilustrium, when his soldiers would hold the annual ceremony to purify their arms, Valerius received a surprise summons from the camp prefect of the Londinium garrison. Technically, he remained under the command of the Twentieth legion and the praefectus castrorum had no authority over himself or his troops. In reality he knew that with the governor immersed in preparations for the spring campaign the man was de facto commander of the south-east. He had a momentary panic that he was being posted home immediately, but quickly realized that order would have come in a simple dispatch.
He made preparations to leave at once, then changed his mind. He had more than one reason for making the trip. He made the short walk to Lucullus’s offices.
‘I am sorry you were inconvenienced.’
Lucullus looked up at the young tribune from the scroll he studied. For an unguarded moment his face was blank, before it automatically took on the fixed smile he wore as if it were part of a uniform.
‘On the contrary,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I apologize for being such a poor host. You were fortunate you did not have the oysters. They had been kept a day longer than was good for them — or for me. My factor’s back now bears the scars to ensure it will not happen again. It was kind of you to come here to enquire after my health.’ The last sentence held the slightest hint of a question.
‘You have been very kind to me,’ Valerius said obliquely. ‘But that was not the only reason for my visit. I must leave for Londinium tomorrow and I have a favour to ask. Part of my supplies — engineering equipment — has failed to arrive. I could send a letter, but it would only give birth to an extended family of paperwork. Would it be possible to hire another of your wagons? I know it is short notice, but I would happily pay a premium.’
‘Pah! Do not talk to me of premiums,’ the little Trinovante blustered. ‘For my friend Valerius there are only discounts. I will give you it at half rate, although, of course, you must provide an acknowledgement for the full amount. Your Roman auditors…’ He shook his head solemnly as if a visit from the auditor was like the arrival of the first plague spot.
Valerius reluctantly agreed to what he knew was tax fraud and arranged for Lunaris to collect the wagon, before turning the conversation to the true subject of his visit. ‘You very generously invited me to hunt over your land. At the time I was busy, but I would be honoured to take up your offer whenever it is convenient.’
Lucullus’s smile visibly transformed itself from lie to truth and he came round the table and clapped Valerius on the back. ‘Wonderful! Send word when you have fetched your shovels. I promised you good sport and you shall have it. There is a boar in the far wood who has been digging up my fields. My factor says he is as big as a pony. If he’s that big he can feed fifty people. We will have him on a spit in time for Samhain and feast till the sun comes up. I remember…’
He was still boasting of the beasts he had taken when Valerius left ten minutes later, but the young Roman could only think of one thing. He would see Maeve again. As he made his way back to the camp he felt someone fall into step beside him and he turned to find Petronius at his side.
‘Falco tells me you are doing business with our tame Briton. I hope he isn’t cheating you?’ The words were accompanied by a smile that suggested they were said in jest, but Valerius felt like a plump trout being tempted by a dangling worm. Somewhere in the sentence was a barbed hook.
‘Surely the quaestor would not allow such a thing?’ he replied guardedly. ‘In any case Falco tells me that you also do business with Lucullus.’ Falco had done no more than offer a hint, but Petronius was not the only one who could dangle a bait.
‘We have an arrangement,’ the lawyer admitted airily. ‘The Celt has his uses and we must at least be seen to try to make common cause with the natives. And if I benefit, does Colonia not also benefit to an even greater degree?’ The boast puzzled Valerius and it showed on his face. Petronius laughed. ‘You have not heard? Poor Lucullus. He talks much more than is good for him. How else would I know what the Celts from here to the River Abus are thinking and planning, who is happy with his lot and who is not?’
Valerius increased his pace. Clearly Colonia formed part of the great military and civilian spy network that blanketed southern Britain. One of the reasons Paulinus felt secure enough to launch an attack on the druids on Mona was that his spymasters had assured him no danger existed to his rear. In any case, how would the Empire decide whom to tax and by how much if they did not know to the last egg and the smallest bushel of corn what the British chieftains were worth. He doubted very much that Petronius was the intelligence mastermind he appeared to want him to think, but the quaestor was a hard man to shake off.
‘You have met his daughter?’
Valerius almost stopped, but that would have betrayed his interest. Maeve was his business and no one else’s. ‘His daughter?’
Petronius was amused. ‘The skinny, dark-haired one. She was with her father outside the temple.’
Skinny? Valerius shrugged and tried to give the impression that, to a soldier, one woman was very much like another. From the corner of his eye he caught Petronius giving him a sly glance.
‘But you must remember her? I believe someone — perhaps it was old Numidius, the engineer? Yes, I’m sure it was him — mentioned that you dined with the Briton and his friends only two days ago. Surely she must have been on hand? I’m surprised he hasn’t already tried to marry her off to you.’
This time Valerius did stop. He gave the quaestor a look that would have silenced any of his centurions, but Petronius only laughed.
‘Do not look so shocked, young man. You are unmarried and of means, and therefore eligible. You are a Roman citizen, which makes you doubly so. If you were the Emperor himself you could hardly make a finer catch for a Briton with ambitions beyond his status. Far better certainly than many he has tried to tempt her with. It is little wonder she had no interest in the attentions of some toothless farmer who still has the manners of the marching camp. But a young man of your lineage…’
‘I am here to do a job, sir,’ Valerius said stiffly. ‘Not to find a wife.’
‘Of course not,’ Petronius said sympathetically. ‘I merely thought to warn you, tribune. Your Briton is a cunning fox, and Lucullus more cunning than most. Do not be misled by that inane grin he wears: there is a mind behind it that could almost be Roman were it not that slyness must never be mistaken for intelligence nor playing the fool for wit. Still, you know of the trap now, and I doubt you will fall into it. I bid you a good day.’ He bowed and walked off in the direction of the Temple of Claudius.
The road between Colonia and Londinium was the most important in the province and Valerius made good time, assisted by the dispatches he carried and the military warrant which allowed him to change horses three times at state-run way stations. When he arrived at the city’s east gate, the guards directed him to an officers’ mansio where he could rest and wash off the accumulated dust and sweat of the journey.
Londinium, even more than Colonia, was a place of bare wooden beams, wet plaster, half-tiled roofs and piles of bricks. Streets echoed to the rattle of hammers as carpenters swarmed over the skeletal beginnings of public buildings, houses and apartment blocks. One stood out among the rest, a massive squat structure with a pillared entrance and two separate wings. It was still far from complete, but the guards surrounding the building indicated that the governor, Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, had already taken up residence in his new palace. Like Colonia, the city had begun life as a fort protecting a river crossing; then, when the restrictions of Colonia’s river access became clear, protecting the port that was the driving force behind Londinium’s bustle of economic and commercial activity. The fort still remained, up by the wall on the high ground to the north-west, but the city’s heart was here in the ordered grid of streets by the river, and in particular on the main street between the Forum and the timber bridge linking the city to the communities which had already sprung up on the southern bank.
Valerius crossed the stream known as the Wall Brook and walked north towards the fort, where he knew the camp prefect had his headquarters. After presenting his orders at the gate, he expected a formal interview and was surprised to be ushered into a small room off the principia and offered wine. Two minutes later the prefect bustled in, throwing out a stream of orders over his shoulder. When the curtain closed behind him, he sat down with a sigh and poured himself a liberal cup and raised it in salute.
‘Health,’ he growled. ‘Though at your age you’ve still got it. After sixteen years in this swampland I have aches that will never leave me and I’m as stiff and creaky as a siege tower.’
Valerius warily acknowledged the exaggeration. Decimus Castus had been a soldier before he was born, had
