'Yes. A test.' He swallowed. 'And if they do test it, they learn of a wall of a different sort.' He took a breath. 'Come. The Petriana isn't really about horses. Or stones and mortar.'
They descended to the eastern half of the fort. Here were the barracks, long and trim. She could smell wood smoke, baking bread, male sweat, and oil for flesh and weapons. A cat lolled by one doorway, and crude graffiti decorated a whitewashed wall. In another entry the wife of a soldier watched them pass, a newborn suckling her breast.
Soon that might be her, Valeria realized, or at least her hired wet nurse. How unready she felt to have children! Yet it could happen at any time, despite her precautions. Her life had changed overnight. So many changes that she felt, for a curious moment, as if she were looking at herself from outside, assessing her life's new peculiarities from a distance.
Against the eastern wall was a small training ground enclosed with a low wooden palisade. A turma of new recruits was being drilled by a frog-throated decurion who seemed capable of cursing in three languages. The probatios looked tired, confused, and awkward in their armor, their forearms bearing a fresh red welt.
'What happened to their flesh?' Valeria whispered.
'The military tattoo. Officers don't bear them.'
'I saw one on Galba.'
'Evidence of his humble birth.'
'Does it hurt?'
'I suppose, but pain is a soldier's companion. The tattoo discourages desertion and helps identify pulped remains after battle.'
It was sword practice, and the drillmaster picked out one of his recruits. 'Brutus!' he barked.
The man jerked, clearly unhappy at being singled out.
'Step forward!'
The new soldier hesitantly complied. He looked uncomfortable in his stiff new armor and walked as if weighted. His superior pointed to one of a score of heavily scarred wooden posts that had been inserted into stone holes in the training courtyard. 'There stands your enemy! Attack with your sword!'
The man obediently marched forward with heavy oval shield, lifted a blunt-edged Roman gladius, and began hacking at the wood with vigor, his companions laughing good-naturedly at his effort. His blows echoed from the fortress walls like the ring of an ax.
'Now, for cavalry practice the men ride in the meadows outside,' Clodius murmured. 'It takes a year to make a good horseman and a lifetime to make a good cavalryman. But basic soldiering skills begin here.'
As chips flew, the man began to sweat and his strokes to falter. 'His training armor and weapons are twice normal weight,' Clodius explained.
'Don't give up now, Brutus!' his companions called. 'We need more kindling for the barracks!'
Grimacing, the soldier kept swinging, but his assault had turned to dispirited labor. Finally the decurion raised his arm. 'Enough, dull-wit!'
The soldier stopped, arms hanging like ropes.
'Tired?'
There was no need to nod.
'No matter, because you were a dead man twenty strokes ago. First, you let your shield arm drift to your left, making a target of your chest and belly. Second, you were chopping high like a barbarian, inviting a sword point into your armpit.' He raised his own arm in demonstration and looked at the other recruits. 'Forget the gladiatorial nonsense of fancy arm and footwork. This is war, not the arena!' The decurion crouched, sidling forward. 'Now, a barbarian looks fearsome with his long overhead stroke, but in the time he takes to swing, a Roman will kill him three times. Why? Because a Roman doesn't stroke, he stabs-from below, like this.' The decurion thrust, and the young man recoiled. 'You go for the abdomen. You go for the balls. Stab in… and up! I don't care if your blue- colored Pict is seven feet tall, he'll squeal and go down. You'll be standing on his great gaping face, smelling his blood and shit, while you do the same trick to his brother. Thrust!' He showed the move again. 'That's the Roman way!'
The men laughed.
'I get queasy just listening to it,' she whispered.
'Decurions like that made us masters of the world. He's the real Hadrian's Wall.'
'Men like Galba.' She understood some of the hardness of Galba Brassidias then. Understood his dour nature. Most Romans never met anyone like him, and never knew who kept their lives so placid.
They walked back toward the commander's house. An older soldier was standing near the training stockade with his arms stretched out, a centurion's vinestaff balanced on his wrists. 'Galba's discipline,' Clodius whispered.
'Galba's world,' Valeria murmured. 'A man's world. So odd to see no other highborn women within these walls.'
'Invite Lady Lucinda for company. Or wives from the other forts.'
'I will.'
'And don't hesitate to ask for me, as a friend.'
'I appreciate that, Clodius.'
'I almost let you be captured once. I won't again.'
'Tribune!'
They looked ahead. Marcus! Valeria's first instinct was to run, but he looked stern, even unhappy. So she stopped to wait for his approach, earning a brief nod of approval at her circumspection.
'A pleasure to see you again, bride. My apologies for not having more time today.'
'Clodius has been showing me your fort.'
'An assignment he was sly enough to ask for.' He turned to his subordinate. 'I wish to talk to you in private, Clodius Albinus. Falco is here.'
Clodius looked depressed. 'Is it about the banquet?'
'The young tribune has already apologized,' Valeria spoke up. 'The wine made him foolish. Please don't be harsh.'
'This isn't your issue, wife.'
'I'm sure he'll have more kindness for British beer!'
'This has nothing to do with beer, either.'
'But what, then? Why bother him further?'
Marcus was annoyed at her persistence. 'It's the slave, Odo.'
'Odo?' Clodius didn't understand.
'The one you poured beer on.'
'What about him?'
'He's been murdered.'
XVII
This man-boy Clodius has not impressed me, from every description I've had of him. 'You seriously suspected him of murder?'
I put the question to the centurion Falco, owner of the dead slave, unsure if this bizarre detour has anything at all to do with the real mystery I'm trying to unravel.
'Clodius had impressed no one-except, perhaps, Valeria. They were close to the same age and both newcomers. She bewitched him, I think, which made the other men think him an even greater fool. So yes, the rest of us suspected him.'
'Tell me how this came about.'
'My slave, Odo, was found dead the morning after the wedding, killed by a table knife thrust to the heart. His head was still sticky with the beer that the buffoon had poured on it, and we all knew Clodius was angry at the Celts for marring his throat. Odo was Scotti, a recent capture, and fighter enough that he hadn't entirely learned a
