The lieutenant didn’t flinch. ‘Tripped over a dog, sir.’
Stilicho looked down and then up again, his eyebrows quizzically raised. ‘Repeat.’
‘Tripped over a dog, sir. In a backstreet in Isca Dumnoniorum. Drunk as a skunk on British mead, sir. Bashed my bonce on a stone watertrough as I went down.’
Stilicho suppressed the urge to smile. He pushed back his camp stool and stood and walked over to the lieutenant. The lieutenant continued to stare straight ahead without a flicker of the eyes. Stilicho stood as tall as him, and he adopted that most unnerving of positions, to the side of his man, but just out of his field of vision. Every drill decurion’s favourite bullying point.
‘A little clumsy, eh, soldier?’
‘Damnably clumsy, sir.’
The general leant close so that he needed only whisper in the soldier’s ear. ‘Some soldiers might have had the wit to make up something a bit more… soldierly? Such as, it was an axe-stroke from a giant Rhinelander that nearly took your head off? Or a bloody great two-handed Frankish sword – but you ducked out of the way just in time, so it only nicked you on the chin? Have you no imagination, soldier?’
‘None whatsoever, sir.’ He raised his scarred chin even higher. ‘Useless memory, too, sir. Which is why I always have to tell the truth.’
Stilicho stood back and grinned. He liked what he saw and heard. He returned to his desk and waved at the canvas stool before it.
‘Sit down, soldier.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Cup of wine?’
‘No, thank you, sir. Keeps me awake at my age.’
‘What is your age?’
‘Twenty-five, sir.’
‘Hm. Wish I was twenty-five again. At my age, wine only puts me to sleep.’ The general poured himself a glass of watery wine anyhow, and sat down likewise. ‘So, how many men in your command?’
‘Just eighty, sir.’
‘A lieutenant, commanding eighty? Where’s your centurion?’
The lieutenant grinned as he thought of his centurion. ‘Still alive, sir. More scars on him than a butcher’s chopping board, but still very much alive. But I know, sir, it’s fucked-up. Pardon my language, but there’s just not… not enough… ’ He trailed off, feeling that what he was about to say was tantamount to treachery.
But Stilicho was ahead of him. ‘I know, I know,’ he said wearily. ‘Not enough men to go round. I’ve heard it all before.’ He leant forward and ran his hands over his face and brooded. Then he resumed. ‘And you’re a Brit?’
‘Sir.’
‘Married?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘So when you marched out of – where were you stationed?’
‘Isca, sir. Dumnonia.’
Stilicho nodded gravely. ‘I know it. Pretty, dark-eyed girls, they say.’
‘Dead right, sir. I married one of ’em.’
‘And so when you marched out of Isca, on imperial orders to return to Italy, to defend Rome at all costs, you left a wife behind?’
‘Yes, sir. And two children.’
‘And two children,’ Stilicho repeated. ‘Tough order. Miss them?’
‘Like hell, sir. I… ’ He hesitated. ‘I hope one day to go back there, sir. When all this is done.’
‘Britain is now beyond the frontier, soldier. You do understand that?’
‘I do, sir. But it’s not yet finished.’
‘Hm.’ Stilicho stroked the thinning grey stubble on the top of his head. ‘But your lot had plenty of desertions?’
The lieutenant looked shamefaced. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Hm. So you joined at – eighteen?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And you’ve got another thirteen years to serve before you get pensioned off. That’s a long time to go without seeing your wife and kids. And a long time for a wife to go without seeing her husband. If you know what I mean.’
‘I’m not complacent, sir.’
‘Remember Emperor Claudius. He only had to go down to the port of Ostia for a few days, and his wife went and married Gaius Silvus.’
‘My wife is no Messalina, sir.’
‘No, no,’ said the general with some haste. ‘And you’re no Claudius, I’m sure, but only a mere mortal like the rest of us.’ He grinned. ‘You know what the Divine Claudius’ last words were, according to Seneca?’
The lieutenant shook his head.
‘ “Oh dear, I think I’ve shat myself!”
The lieutenant smiled. Then Stilicho resumed more seriously, ‘And when you get pensioned off, you won’t get a farm in Britain for your service, not any more. You’ll maybe get something in Gaul. And maybe not.’
The lieutenant said nothing.
The general sighed and felt a great weight on his shoulders. It was the weight of responsibility, plus the weight of this good lieutenant’s tragic loyalty. And there were thousands more like him, who would not desert their last post.
‘OK, soldier. Now give me a game of draughts before you go. You play draughts?’
‘Badly, sir.’
‘Me too. Excellent. Means the game won’t last long and we can soon go to bed.’
The game lasted, as the general had predicted, only a few minutes. The lieutenant won.
‘Badly indeed,’ said Stilicho grudgingly. He sat back and stretched. ‘OK, soldier, you can go. Reveille at first light.’
‘Sir.’
Stilicho sat for a long time on his own, gazing at the scattered draughts before him by the light of the guttering candle. He heard the howl of the wolves at the river’s edge, eerily nearby, come down from the hills above to drink, or to lie in wait for their prey, when they came to drink likewise. And he heard the answering howl of the camp dogs calling to their cousins beyond, in the wilderness. Like men, penned in the safety of their cities, longing for the ungoverned wilderness in their turn. Bored with civilisation and its heavy demands, its frustrating interdictions, and longing for the old forest ways, and the new dark age.
Stilicho reached out for more wine, and then stopped himself. Freedom comes when you learn to say no. He slept at his desk.
Over the next few days of the march to Pavia, the general came to like his new aide-de-camp, the British lieutenant, more and more as they rode alongside each other. Lucius was his name.
‘And my horse,’ said the lieutenant, leaning forward and patting the long, grey, powerful neck, ‘is called Tugha Ban.’
The general eyed him a little sardonically. ‘You have a name for your horse?’
Lucius nodded. ‘The finest grey mare from the stock of the wide horse-country of the Iceni. And where I go, she goes.’
The general shook his head. Horse-lovers.
‘What do you think of the Palatine Guard, soldier?’ he asked. ‘As a Frontier Guard yourself?’
‘Begging your pardon, sir, but in all honesty I’d rather not say.’
‘Hm,’ murmured Stilicho. ‘I think they’re a bunch of posturing nancy-boys myself.’
The lieutenant grinned and said nothing.
‘You’ll dine with me tonight, soldier. Just the two of us. I’ve things I want to discuss with you.’
‘Sir?’
