risen through the ranks and held every senior centurion’s post in the Ninth legion before being promoted again to his present position, where he outranked even senior tribunes with lines of senatorial relatives dating back to before Caesar. He answered only to his legate and to his governor. Normally he would still be with the Ninth at Lindum, but it was a measure of Londinium’s growing importance that the fort was under the authority of a battle-hardened veteran instead of the young auxiliary prefect who would normally command a post like this.
‘Wondering why I dragged you away from your bumps and bridges, eh?’ Castus beckoned Valerius forward to where a map lay pinned to a wooden frame. ‘You’re based in Colonia, here,’ he indicated, ‘with a full cohort and a complement of mounted scouts. I take it you’ve made contact with the prefect in charge of the auxiliary cavalry wing billeted to the south? Yes. Good. You’ll need to work closely with him.
‘Now, see here, here and here?’ He pointed to three positions marked across the centre of the map. ‘Just east of Pennocrucium, to the south of Ratae and about twenty miles from Durobrivae. We’ve had word of unusual activity in all these areas. Nothing solid. Nothing you can pin down, but, shall we say, a change of attitude among the natives. Notice the dates?’ Valerius looked more closely and saw each site was marked with a date about a week apart, with the latest three weeks before. ‘Now, governor Paulinus is not minded to take these reports seriously, and he’s probably right, but I’m old enough to remember what happened when we disarmed the tribes back in Scapula’s time. One minute they were quiet as dormice, the next they came screaming over the battlements like wolves. Never underestimate your Briton, young man. He can be subdued, but he’ll never be tamed. There’s a pattern to these changes that makes my old wounds itch.’ He waved a hand over the eastern sector of the map, as yet unmarked. ‘If that pattern continues, we’ll have word from around Lindum, where I’ve already asked the Ninth to quietly keep an eye on things, then further south-east, which brings us to the point. I want you to work with your cavalry commander to carry out aggressive patrols to the north and north-west of Colonia, with particular emphasis on the country where the boundaries of the Trinovantes, the Catuvellauni and the Iceni meet.’
‘The quaestor ’s opinion is that this area is quiet,’ Valerius ventured.
Castus grunted. ‘So I understand. The next thing you’ll be telling me is that the Celts enjoy being taxed and they think the price we pay them for corn is fair.’
Valerius smiled and resumed his study of the map. It seemed a small thing to be getting so exercised about. Still, Castus knew his business better than most. ‘Spies can be wrong,’ he agreed. ‘I’ll issue the order as soon as I return to Colonia. The cavalry commander, Bela, is a good man and his troops are keen.’
‘You should pay particular attention to the Iceni,’ Castus continued. ‘They’re our allies and old Prasutagus is on friendly terms with the governor, but that doesn’t make them any more trustworthy and it means we know less about them than we do the other tribes. It’s more difficult to spy on your friends than your enemies. Anything you can discover would be of help, but you’ll have to be subtle.’
When the interview was over Valerius walked the short distance to the quartermaster’s depot by the north gate. There, his business looked likely to take longer thanks to a clerk who insisted that a mistake wasn’t a mistake unless it was confirmed in writing and endorsed by three seals, and he wouldn’t budge on that even if it happened to be the governor at the other side of his desk. Fortunately, the clerk’s overseer was a decurion who had served with the Twentieth and recognized Valerius.
‘If the tribune says the shovels didn’t turn up, they didn’t turn up, and if the Twentieth needs shovels, the Twentieth gets shovels. Anything else you require, sir?’ he asked with a wink. Valerius left with an assurance that when his wagon arrived it would be loaded with a dozen shields and swords and fifty pila to replace those ‘lost’ during the summer, which would go some way to paying his debt to Falco.
Lunaris wasn’t likely to reach Londinium with the wagon until the next day, which gave him a night to kill. He didn’t want to be alone, but equally he didn’t want to be with the type of woman available to a soldier in a city like this. In fact, the only woman he wanted to be with was Maeve. Eventually, he settled for a night in the mansio drinking wine with a few fellow officers either passing through on their way to join a legion, or travelling back to Rome. It amused him to listen to the veterans’ hair-raising stories of the prowess of the Celtic warriors from the western tribes he had faced earlier in the year. He watched one of the younger newcomers grow paler and paler and finally took pity on the man.
‘I don’t believe they were actually seven feet tall,’ he whispered. ‘And they bleed just as easily as the next man. You have nothing to fear if you keep your shield up and your sword sharp.’
‘But do they truly burn their prisoners alive and eat their still beating hearts?’
He smiled. ‘Only in the north, and I believe your unit is in the west.’
‘They burn their prisoners in the west, too.’ The growl came from a rough-hewn centurion sitting by the fire in the corner of the room. ‘At least the druids do. But not for much longer. I was on the staff of the Fourteenth and we’re going to settle them for good. They think they’re safe on their little island but the only way they’ll leave it alive will be if they swim for it. We’ll be waiting to welcome them on the beach, then we’ll see who burns. Come the summer there won’t be a druid left in Britain, and good riddance to them.’
Valerius looked around to see who might be listening. Talk like this was universal among soldiers but hearing the man trumpet details of an impending military campaign made the hairs on the back of his neck rise. The servants in the mansio were all British slaves and he doubted they could be trusted. He had heard many stories about the druids’ merciless cruelty but beneath those stories lay an unlikely respect. These men, these priests, were the mortar which had bound the British tribes until Claudius had shattered their unity with a combination of military might and subterfuge. They might have been herded back on to their sacred island, but they were still organized. It wasn’t only Rome that had spies. He shot the centurion a warning look, but the man refused to be silenced.
‘Everyone knows, and why should they not?’ he said defiantly. ‘If the Britons fight, so much the better. The more of them who try to stop us, the more of the vermin we will kill.’
Valerius had a sudden image of a pair of fire-filled eyes and a flashing knife; a man who wanted to kill him more than he loved life itself.
‘What if there are too many of them for you to kill?’
XV
The following day he woke before dawn and joined legionaries of the Londinium garrison in the fortress exercise yard. An hour sweating with the practice sword had become as much part of his life as eating and drinking and he’d reached a stage where he enjoyed the small agonies which accompanied pushing his body to the very limit. He knew Lunaris was unlikely to arrive until late afternoon and while he laboured against his opponent’s shield he decided to spend the morning at the public baths, down by the waterfront close to the inn where he had arranged to meet the duplicarius. There he spent a few pleasant hours listening to desultory and no doubt scurrilous gossip in the baths and wondering at the good fortune that had allowed him the pleasure of the caldarium and the tepidarium twice in as many weeks after so long an abstinence. Later, a slave oiled his body before scraping the skin clean with a sharp-edged strigil, and by the time he emerged he felt more relaxed than he’d been for months.
Still surrounded by a pleasurable euphoria, he reached the tavern, happy to see that it hadn’t been subsumed in one of the many building projects going on around it. It occupied the ground floor of a three storey insula and was identified by an amphora hanging at an angle from two chains above the doorway. A painted poster beside the open door advertised the finest imported wines, but Valerius knew that anyone who thought they’d find them in a place like this was destined to be disappointed. Inside, oil lamps flickered from the walls but seemed to produce more smoke than light. It was busy even at this hour of the day, as he’d guessed it would be. This was a sailor’s town and sailors between voyages only had two interests. Judging by the laughter and the high-pitched female squeals, both were available here. He took one last deep breath of relatively clean air and plunged inside.
Lunaris had made the choice, and Valerius could see why, but it wasn’t a place he would have selected for himself. The room he entered had a low ceiling and measured about thirty paces by fifteen, with five or six seated alcoves where a man might conduct his business in relative privacy. In another establishment the sight of an officer’s uniform would have caused a hush in the conversation, but here his fellow customers ignored his presence. A glimpse of scarlet in the gloom told him he was not the only army man among all these seamen. He pushed towards the bar through the crowd vying for the attentions of a few heavily painted and only partially dressed
