Give Me Back My Legions!

XII

“He almost bit, Father! By the gods, he almost did!” Arminius couldn’t hide his own excitement as they made their way north and west, back toward their own country. “He was like a fat trout. He nibbled at the worm, and he never saw the hook.”

“Like a trout, or like a water dragon?” Sigimerus asked. “What would you have done if he’d decided to take your route? What could you have done except let him take it—and eat half a dozen tribes out of house and home along the way? No one in Germany would have loved you after that. And you couldn’t have gathered an army together fast enough to fight him.”

Arminius scowled, not because his father was wrong but because he was right. Rain dripped through the pines. Arminius and Sigimerus both had their cloaks up over their heads. They were both wet even so. The rain also turned the track to mud. They slogged on without complaint—things in Germany had always been like this.

“Next year,” Arminius said. “Next year we can be ready—I’m sure of it. All Varus has to do is take the bait.”

“And then what?” Sigimerus insisted on looking at all the things that could go wrong. “Varus and the Romans see we have an army. So what? They have an army, too. They don’t fight like us, but that doesn’t mean they’re bad at it. If they were, we would have driven them off years before you were born.”

Rain dripping off the end of his nose, Arminius scowled again, for the same reason as before. He knew how good the Romans were. He hadn’t just seen them fight or stood against them—he’d used their system. He not only understood that it worked, he understood how it worked.

In his mind’s eye, he heard Roman trumpets blaring. He saw the swarthy little men moving from marching order to line of battle without wasted motion. He imagined the blizzard of javelins they’d send up, the wall of their big shields, and the way their sharp swords would bite like vipers.

“We have to ruin them before they can deploy.” He’d said that before . His inner picture of the legions getting ready to face a German host only made the words seem more urgent now.

Urgency failed to impress his father. “All very well to talk about it. How do you aim to do it?”

The question was as pointed as a Roman gladius. “We have to take them in a place where they can’t swing from column into line,” Arminius said.

“And where will you find a place like that?” his father asked. “You can wish for one, but it’s not the same thing.”

“I’ll do more than wish. I’ll be traveling this winter anyhow. Everywhere I go, I’ll look for what we need. Sooner or later, I’m bound to find it. Germany isn’t all flatlands and fields. If I keep my eyes open, I’ll find something.” Arminius made himself sound confident.

“I hope you’re right,” Sigimerus said. “Me, I’ll be glad to get home to your mother for a while. And I expect you won’t be sorry to see Thusnelda again, either.”

In spite of the rain, Arminius’ blood heated. “That’s so,” he said. He’d bought relief a few times while staying at Mindenum. Seeing German women selling themselves for silver distressed him, but not enough to keep him from taking advantage of them. He thought his father had done the same thing, though neither asked the other about it. If you were a long way from your woman, you took what you could find.

If she did the same while you were away, you had the right to slit her throat and fling her faithless body into a bog. Men didn’t need to be chaste, but women did.

“You should get a child on her,” Sigimerus said. “That will bind her to you even after passion fades.”

“Good advice.” Arminius smiled wolfishly. “You’d best believe I aim to try.” Both men laughed. Arminius tried to pick up the pace, but the sloppy path wouldn’t let him. “Gods curse this mud,” he said, and laughed again, this time on a different note. “Now I understand why the Romans want to build their roads in our land.”

“So they can get to our women in a hurry,” Sigimerus said: one more gibe with too much truth behind it.

A jay screeched, high up in a pine. Most of the birds were gone now, heading off to the south: toward the Roman Empire. Some stubborn ones stayed through the winter, though. Vultures and ravens and carrion crows squabbled over carcasses regardless of the season. Arminius wanted to glut them on Roman meat. He had a plan. He needed a place.

My third winter in Vetera, Quinctilius Varus thought with a kind of benumbed wonder. When he first came up to the Rhine, he could have imagined no fate more dismal than spending three winters here. Now, though, this Roman military town seemed an outpost of civilization compared to what lay beyond the river.

He wasn’t the only one who felt that way. “By the gods, sir, it’s good to have real walls around me and a proper roof over my head,” Aristocles said. “Meaning no disrespect to you and the job you’re doing, but I get tired of living under canvas.”

“I don’t think you’ll fall over dead with surprise if I tell you I feel the same way,” Varus said. “One day, Mindenum will make a fine city, I suppose. Plenty of places that started out as legionary encampments are. Even Vetera’s on the way, though I wouldn’t have believed it when I got here. But Mindenum does have… some way to go yet.”

The pedisequus dipped his head in Greek agreement. “Oh, doesn’t it just!” he said fervently. “Why, on this side of the Rhine I can go out beyond the wall by myself without worrying that some savage will murder me and spike my head to a tree.”

“That’s… not too likely around Mindenum.” Varus hid a smile, though part of what he hid was wistful. Being a slave, Aristocles didn’t have to pretend to courage he didn’t own. As Roman governor of Germany, Varus did. He knew he’d been better suited to peaceful Syria. Unfortunately, Augustus didn’t, and Augustus’ will was the only one that counted. Not only for Aristocles’ sake but for his own, Varus went on, “The Germans around there have learned more of our ways than any others, I do believe.”

“More, maybe, but not enough.” Plainly, nothing would turn Aristocles into a Germanophile. Well, he wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

“We need time, that’s all.” Again, Varus worked to convince himself, too. “When I was born, these Gauls on this side of the river were nothing but trousered barbarians still smarting after Caesar’s conquest. You can’t tell me they don’t make good Roman subjects now.”

“Tolerable, I suppose.” Truth to tell, Aristocles didn’t approve of anything north of the Alps. “At least they mostly use olive oil, not butter.” He wrinkled his nose. “More than you can say about the Germans.”

“The olive won’t grow there,” Varus said. “For that matter, it won’t grow here, either, though it will farther south in Gaul. But our merchants take the oil all over the province. They can do the same in Germany. They will, once we get the place a little more settled.”

“That day can’t come soon enough.” Aristocles’ long nose twitched again. “Butter on bread is bad enough, even when it’s fresh. But the unending stink of the stuff in the lamps… It sticks to your hair, it sticks to your skin, and you can’t get away from it. And every German reeks of it.”

“Not every German.” Varus shook his head. His pedisequus would have tossed his. Varus was long used to that difference between Romans and Greeks. He continued, “Arminius and his father smell the same way we do.”

“They do when they’re scrounging our food and aping our ways,” Aristocles sniffed. “If you called on them in their village now, they’d be as rancid as all the other German savages.”

“Enough!” Varus snapped so he wouldn’t have to think about that.

“Arminius is a fine young man. We already have Roman Senators from Spain. Before too long, we’ll probably have some from Gaul. And, if Arminius lives long enough, he may be the first man of German blood to don the toga edged with purple. If he is, I don’t expect any of the other Conscript Fathers to complain about how he smells.”

“They’re polite. Arminius…” It was chilly in Varus’ residence despite fires and braziers, but that had nothing to do with Aristocles’ shiver. “He looks at me like a fox eyeing a pullet—and his father is even worse.”

“Sigimerus is a formidable man,” Varus said. Arminius’ father reminded him of a tough old wolf, too. “But if we tame the younger man, he will tame the elder for us.”

“Yes, sir. If.” A slave wasn’t supposed to take the last word when he argued with his master. Aristocles walked away anyhow, leaving Varus with his mouth hanging open.

The Roman said something that would have made Aristophanes blush. But he said it quietly, to himself. And then he started to laugh. He’d dealt with slaves his whole life. Every once in a while, you had to remember they were people, not just property with legs.

The governor of Germany summoned his leading officers to plan the next campaigning season’s moves inside the province the Romans didn’t quite rule. “I want to see more of Germany than Mindenum and the miserable route we use to reach it,” he declared.

“It’s not so miserable, sir,” Lucius Eggius said. “We can use boats most of the way. They’re faster than marching, and they’re safer, too.”

“Foot soldiers can use boats,” Vala Numonius said. “Not so easy for cavalry, by the gods! There are never enough boats for the horses -”

“Or for the mules and donkeys and oxen,” a quartermaster broke in.

“That’s right.” Numonius nodded. “We slogged back through the mud every cubit of the way. If the savages came screaming out of the woods, we wouldn’t have had a smooth time of it, either.”

“I see. I understand.” Eggius nodded, too. Quinctilius Varus thought everything would go smoothly after that. But Eggius aimed a sarcastic dart at the cavalry commander: “You enjoy marching through mud so much, you want to take the long way back from Mindenum and go through even more of it.”

Vala Numonius turned red. “No, curse it! I want a route that doesn’t go through mud.”

“Good luck, friend. It’s Germany,” Eggius said. “You’ve got swamps, and you’ve got woods. Sometimes, just to keep you on your toes, you’ve got swamps in woods. That’s what the country is.”

That certainly fit what Varus had seen. Even so, he said, “Arminius tells me that if we swing north of the low hills north of the Lupia, the land is drier. He says we can march up around there and keep our feet dry-almost the whole way.”

If a portrait painter had wanted to sketch insubordination, he could have used Lucius Eggius as a model. “Meaning no disrespect, sir, but I’d sooner not trust a German if I don’t have to,” Eggius said.

Whenever a man said Meaning no disrespect, he meant disrespect. Varus had learned that rule when he hardly needed to scrape down from his cheeks. It had served him well ever since, and he recalled no exceptions to it. “I think Arminius is reliable,” he said now. “Never mind his past service to Rome. Would he have spent so much time at Mindenum last summer if he meant us ill? He prefers us to his own savage kind.”

“Will you say his father likes us better, too, sir?” Lucius Eggius asked. “The old bastard spent as much time at Mindenum as Arminius did.”

Varus opened his mouth, then closed it again. He might want to say that, but no one who’d ever set eyes on Sigimerus would claim he was Romanized, even if his son was. “He came along with Arminius to see what Roman ways are like. He didn’t seem to mind sleeping soft or drinking wine.” Having said so much, Varus knew he’d gone as far as he could.

Eggius’ chuckle had a wry edge. “Your Excellency, I like sleeping soft and drinking wine, too. That doesn’t tell me much about what this barbarian’d do to me if he ever got the chance.”

“The Germans seem to pay more attention to Arminius than they do to Sigimerus, and Arminius is in our company any way you care to use the phrase,” Varus insisted.

Another officer—a junior man, one whose name Varus was always forgetting—said, “What about those things Segestes keeps telling us? If even a quarter of that’s true, Arminius isn’t such a big friend of Rome’s as he makes himself out to be.”

Several other soldiers nodded. Varus fought to hide his exasperation: a losing battle. “Oh, by the gods, mm, Caelius!” he said. There—he’d remembered. “You might as well be Jews and Egyptians and Cappadocians back at Rome, caring more for gossip than you do for truth.”

Vala Numonius nodded. Most of the other legionaries eyed Varus in stony silence. They didn’t like him calling them a bunch of Jews. He groaned silently. Now he’d have to waste Mars only knew how much time jollying them along till they weren’t angry at him anymore. They were even more foolish than Jews; they reminded him of spoiled children. He was tempted to tell them so, but that would only make things worse.

It began to pour outside. Vetera might have been built of wood rather than canvas, but the place wasn’t well built of wood. Every other roof leaked, including this one. Water started plinking into two pots set out under the leaks. The sound would have annoyed Varus most of the time: it would have reminded him how far away he was from places where they did things properly. Now, though, it came as a welcome distraction. Pointing towards one of the pots, he said, “Well, gentlemen, it’s still winter. We don’t have to make up our minds right now.”

That seemed to satisfy the soldiers, at least the ones with sense enough not to show too much. Some of them—the more naive ones—would believe him when he said nothing was decided yet. The rest would see that antagonizing Augustus’ kinsman by marriage wasn’t the smartest thing they could do.

“For now, let’s discuss something else,” Quinctilius Varus went on. The officers looked relieved. “We took far more taxes in silver last fall than we did the year before, and correspondingly less in kind,” he said. “I want that trend to continue next fall. Before many more years go by, I expect Germany to use as much money and to take money as much for granted as any other Roman province… Yes, Eggius?”

“Only one thing wrong with that, sir,” the military prefect said. “There isn’t as much money in Germany as there is in an ordinary province. The natives mostly don’t buy and sell amongst themselves—they swap back and forth, like. So sometimes we can squeeze silver out of ‘em, sure, but sometimes they just don’t have any.”

Varus’ smile showed genuine pleasure. Now he was arguing on his ground, not the legionaries’. “As the province grows more settled and more used to Roman rule, we can expect to see more traders entering from Gaul, and from Rhaetia south of the Danube. They’ll bring silver with them—they want to do business in cash whenever they can. The more denarii there are in Germany, the more we can take out in taxes. Doesn’t that seem sensible to you?”

He didn’t even have to make his tone suggest That had better seem sensible to you, or you’ll be sorry. The mildly spoken words were plenty by themselves. And Lucius Eggius got the message. He might be a stubborn nitpicker; unlike some of his colleagues, he wasn’t a stupid stubborn nit-picker. “Well, yes, sir. As long as everything in Germany stays smooth, that has a fighting chance of working out, anyway.”

“Why wouldn’t everything stay smooth?” Now Varus let himself sound ominous.

But if he hoped to impress the officers, he failed. At least half a dozen of them chorused, “Because it’s fornicating Germany!” Several others nodded. All Varus could do was fume.

Somewhere ahead lay the ocean. Arminius had never seen it, but he could smell the salt tang on the wind blowing down from the north. Serving in Pannonia, he’d heard Romans talking about the sea. To them, it was blue and warm and generally friendly. But he’d also heard men from the Frisii, the Chauci, the Anglii, and other seaside German tribes. They called the ocean green or gray. They said it was cold—freezing in the wintertime. And they thought it was at least as dangerous as a wolf or a bear. Either somebody was lying or the ocean was more fickle than any woman ever born. Arminius still hadn’t made up his mind which.

He was up near the marches between his own Cherusci and the Chauci. He wanted to talk to the men who lived north of his tribe. He knew they were fierce; the wars they’d fought against his own folk proved as much. The Cherusci would long since have conquered any tribe that couldn’t match their ferocity. Arminius might not love the Chauci, but he respected them for many of the same reasons he respected the Romans.

And the Chauci would respect him—unless they decided to take his head instead. If they did, they would face another round of war with the Cherusci. They had to know it.

That north wind brought more than sea-scent with it. Rain started dripping down out of a lead-gray sky. Arminius pulled his cloak up over his head. His father was doing the same thing at the same time. Neither of them got upset. It was winter. If it didn’t rain, it would likely snow.

“Living close by the sea, the Chauci have wetter winters than we do,” Sigimerus said.

Arminius shuddered. “One more reason to be glad we don’t belong to their tribe,” he said. “Some of the Romans told me it never rains in summer in their country, and hardly ever snows in winter.”

“No rain in the summer! How do they raise their crops?” his father asked.

“They plant in the fall and harvest in the spring,” Arminius said. “They do get rain in winter. It waters the grain.”

“I think those Romans were lying, the way they would if they said their trees grew with branches underground and roots in the air,” Sigimerus said. “They just wanted to see what you’d fall for.”

“I don’t know, Father,” Arminius said. “Pannonia plants in spring and reaps in the fall, the same as we do. The Romans kept talking about how funny that was.”

“Well, I wasn’t there,” Sigimerus said—a polite way of skirting an argument. His foot came down in mud. He pulled it out and scraped the muck off on some dying grass. “I wish I weren’t here, too.”

“If you know a better track that goes north, you should have told me about it,” Arminius said. This one snaked north and west along the edge of a bog. The reasonably hard ground was wide enough for three or four men abreast, no more.

Sigimerus pointed. “It does get a little better up ahead—just a couple of bowshots up ahead, as a matter of fact. The ground up there gets higher, and… Are you listening to me, Arminius?” He raised his right hand, as if he were on the point of cuffing his son for not paying attention. But that was only old habit. Arminius was too big to cuff, even if he wasn’t listening.

And he wasn’t. He was looking at the higher ground Sigimerus had pointed out. By the way he was looking at it, he might have seen the Germans’ fierce gods feasting there.

Sigimerus stared. Try as he would, he couldn’t see or even imagine the gods there. Because he couldn’t, he went on grumbling: “When I was a young man, we respected our elders. We didn’t forget they were there.”

“I’m sorry, Father.” Arminius didn’t sound very sorry. “It’s just that -”

“What?” Sigimerus snapped.

“Now I know what to tell the Chauci,” Arminius said. Sigimerus spent the next two days trying to get him to explain what he meant. To the older man’s disgust, Arminius wouldn’t. His smile, though, was even broader and more self-satisfied than it had been when he brought Thusnelda home from Segestes’ house.

Quinctilius Varus had just sent away a German girl when Aristocles tapped on his door. Varus grumbled to himself; the pedisequus was pushing things by bothering him so soon. Couldn’t a man have some leisure to enjoy the afterglow? Had Varus been as young as the girl, he would have enjoyed another round. In his fifties, he’d have to wait a day or two—or three—no matter how many leeks and eggs and snails he ate. Not even oysters would help much, and they’d likely spoil by the time they got here from the coast.

And so, grouchily, he said, “What is it?”

“Please excuse me, sir,” Aristocles said as he came in, “but there’s someone here I think you’d better see.”

“Oh, really? Who?” Varus asked. The first person he thought of who might fit that bill was a messenger from Augustus. If the rebels in Pannonia had surrendered or been crushed, if Tiberius was on his way to finish the job in Germany… Varus wouldn’t be affronted. By the sweet gods! he thought. I could go home!

But a glance at his slave’s face told him the news wasn’t that good. Voice faintly apologetic, Aristocles answered, “The distinguished German gentleman named Segestes.”

Varus knew that, as far as Aristocles was concerned, there was no such thing as a distinguished German gentleman. He also knew Segestes was about the last person he wanted to see. “I don’t suppose you could tell him I’ve gone down to Italy to get the hair in my nose and ears trimmed?” he said.

Aristocles tossed his head. “I don’t think he’d be happy to hear something like that, sir. He did come all this way… He talks as if he thinks he has important news.”

“The only trouble with that is, he always thinks he has important news, and he’s been wrong every time so far.” Quinctilius Varus heaved a sigh. “Oh, very well. You can’t really tell him to turn around and go on back to Germany. Take him to the small dining room and give him wine and whatever else he fancies. I’ll be along soon.”

“I’ll do that then, sir.” The pedisequus bobbed his head and hurried out of the bedchamber. With another sigh, Varus draped himself in his toga. Roman fashions weren’t made for winters like this. He understood why the Germans wore breeches under their cloaks. He wished he could himself, but what people would say if a Roman governor started aping the barbarians did not bear thinking on.

He did put on thick wool socks that rose almost to his knees. He could wear those without loss of dignity, and his wife’s female slaves had knitted him several pairs. Trousers would have covered more of him, but the socks were better than nothing. They did help keep his feet warm, anyhow.

When he walked into the small dining room, Segestes was drinking neat wine and eating figs candied in honey. The German jumped to his feet and clasped Varus’ hand. “Your Excellency!” he said in his gutturally accented Latin.

“Good day, Segestes. Always a pleasure to see you.” One thing long experience in Roman politics had done for Varus: he could lie with a straight face and a sincere voice. “What brings you to Vetera today?”

A Roman might have used polite evasions for a while. Segestes’ words were as blunt as his features: “About what you would expect. I bring you news of Arminius. It is not good news, not for anyone who cares about Rome and the Roman province of Germany.”

Quinctilius Varus poured wine for himself; the house slaves had thoughtfully left two cups on the table. “Well, tell me what it is.” He went on doing his best to sound friendly. But he felt he was going through the same thing more often than he wanted, as if he kept burping up fish that hadn’t been quite right to begin with.

“He has gone up to the north, to talk with the Chauci.” Segestes’ wintry eyes widened to show what a wicked deed that was.

“And why has he gone there?” Varus asked patiently. He wasn’t altogether sure Arminius had; he disliked taking Segestes’ word for anything. He kept quiet about that. If the German thought Varus reckoned him a liar, things might take an unpleasant turn.

“They dwell far from Mindenum, sir. The power of the legions is not much felt in their land. And they have been a strong, fierce tribe for many years. Why else would Arminius go to them but to seek their help in his fight against Rome?” By the way Segestes laid things out, he might have been a Greek geometer drawing in the dust with a stick to prove a theorem.

Suddenly and powerfully, Varus missed the warm sun of Athens, missed the bright sky, missed standing in the shade of an olive tree with gray-green leaves as a Greek geometer drew his figures and then erased them with his sandal. He missed everything the sun and the tree and the geometer stood for, too. He missed civilization.

He’d never dreamt his work would involve extending civilization to Germany. Dealing with this wolfish savage told how hard the job was and would be. And, as far as Varus could see, Segestes hadn’t proved his theorem now, any more than he had any other time he trotted it out.

“Did you hear Arminius speaking to these Chauci? Do you know for a fact what he said to them?” the Roman governor asked.

“Did I hear him? No.” Segestes shook his big head. Like so many Germans, he towered over Varus. Varus didn’t like it. His unwelcome guest went on, “But I know what he must have said.”

“How?” Varus demanded, perhaps more bluntly than he’d intended. The wine he’d poured himself was as neat as Segestes’. Unmixed wine kept you warm in the wintertime. It also mounted straight to your head.

“I will tell you how, sir.” Segestes might have drunk more than one cup himself. Bright red spots burned on his cheekbones. His teeth seemed uncommonly long and sharp as he continued, “I know because, if I stood before the Chauci blazing with hatred for Rome, it is what I would say.”

“Ah. There we have it.” Varus pounced. “Why do you claim Arminius blazes with hatred for Rome? You will have heard, I suppose, that he and his father guested with me at Mindenum this summer? They showed no hatred then.”

“Have you ever caught a duck with your hands?” Segestes asked.

“What on earth does that have to do with anything?” Varus asked irritably.

“You haven’t, then. I did not think so.” The German nodded to himself. “You sit by the riverbank. You sit very still, so you don’t scare the duck off right away. After a while, it grows easier at having you around. You toss crumbs of stale bread or whatever other food you have into the water. The duck swims closer and closer. It loves you now. You go on sitting still, but for when you feed it. And then, when it comes close enough, you grab it”—he lunged at Varus, who involuntarily stumbled back -”and you wring its neck!”

He could have wrung Varus’ neck had he wanted to. Both men knew it. It made them oddly complicit, there in the chilly little dining hall. With what dignity Varus could muster, he said, “I am no duck, nor is Arminius hunting me.”

“So you say,” Segestes replied. “If you kill Arminius and I am wrong, though, you do Rome no harm. But if you do not kill him, if you let the worthless swinehound live, and I am right, you do not just hurt yourself. You also hurt Rome. You may hurt Rome badly, for you do not grasp how ambitious Arminius is.”

Ambitio was a word to conjure with in Latin. Quinctilius Varus wondered whether Segestes knew. A man ambitious for himself rather than Rome was the greatest danger to the state. Ambitious men had brought down the Republic. Now Augustus, having gained all his ambitions, did his best to keep others from having any.

“Ask any man in any clan in any tribe in all of Germany,” Segestes went on. “If he knows my name, he will tell you I am Rome’s friend and ally. Ever since my beard began to grow, I have been on the Roman side. I have fought for Rome inside Germany. Arminius never has. He never will. He thinks you are a duck, sir. He throws stale bread on the water to make you swim closer. Will you let him grab you?”

He didn’t go for Varus’ throat again. From what Varus had seen of Germans that showed unusual restraint from Segestes. “Well, you may be right,” the Roman governor said after silence stretched.

In the Roman Empire, anyone with ears to hear would have understood that as Quiet down and go away. You’re boring my toes off. Segestes might be a Roman citizen, but he was no Roman sophisticate. “You wait. You look close. You… will see I am right.” He had to pause to remember how to form the future.

Varus just wanted him to leave. They’d played this scene too many times now. Did actors get sick of roles after performing them over and over? If they didn’t, why not?

Segestes poured himself more wine and drank it down. The red patches on his cheeks burned bigger and brighter. He reached for a candied fig, then pulled his hand back. When he looked at Varus again, his eyes were bright with unshed tears. “Ask you something, your Excellency?” he said, his speech slightly slurred.

“Of course,” Varus said, more cordially than he felt.

“You had Arminius as your guest for all that time at Mindenum,” the German chieftain said, which didn’t sound like a question to Varus.

He nodded anyway. “Yes. That’s right. He was there, he and his father both.” And if you don’t like it, too bad.

Segestes muttered to himself. Then, slowly, painfully, he brought out what was on his mind: “While Arminius was with you, did he speak of Thusnelda? Did he say she was well? Did he say she was happy?”

He loves her. He cares about her, Varus realized in surprise. He’d assumed Segestes resented Arminius for showing him up, not for stealing away someone who mattered to him. But the middle-aged chieftain wasn’t just posturing. He missed his daughter, and he worried about her.

Varus had to think back. Arminius hadn’t talked much about Thusnelda one way or the other. But what did that prove? Varus hadn’t talked much about Claudia Pulchra, either. He remembered speaking of his own son—of whom Arminius reminded him a little—but not of his wife.

He picked his words with care: “In all the time he was there, I never heard anything to make me doubt it. He is not a man who enjoys hurting someone and then laughing about it.”

Varus had hoped that would make Segestes feel better, but it didn’t seem to. The German heaved a sigh. “No, I suppose he is not that kind of beast,” he allowed. “That does not mean he is no beast. He takes what he wants and then, once he has it, he puts it on a shelf and forgets about it. Not so bad, if you talk about a fancy pot or a silver statuette. But if a girl sits on a shelf and gathers dust, it is cruel, not so?”

Plenty of girls gave their all to men who got bored with them afterwards. Varus didn’t think Segestes wanted to hear that. “I hope it will turn out for the best in the end,” the Roman said: one more sentiment that sounded good and cost him nothing.

“I always hope for this.” Segestes’ slow, deliberate Latin seemed strangely impressive. “But what I hope for and what I expect are two different things.” He sighed once more. “I cannot persuade you. I cannot, uh, convince you. All I can do is to say again, Try not to be a duck, your Excellency.” He sketched a salute and strode out of the small dining room with no more ceremony than that.

Aristocles appeared a moment later. Varus nodded, unsurprised. “Were you listening?” he asked.

“Of course not, sir!” The pedisequus sounded shocked: so shocked, Varus didn’t believe him for a heartbeat.

“He does go on, doesn’t he?” the Roman governor said.

“And on, and on,” Aristocles agreed, not caring that he’d just given himself the lie. “What was that nonsense about ducks? I couldn’t follow all of that.”

“Don’t worry—it’s not worth following. But he really is fond of his daughter.” Varus shook his head in wonder. “You never can tell.”

“With Germans, you never can tell about anything,” Aristocles remarked.

“True,” Varus said, and then wished he hadn’t.