Hadrian's wall

XVI

The first thing Valeria decided about married life is that she didn't feel very married. She slept until noon, exhausted by the previous day's excitement and the night's apprehension and unsatisfactory fulfillment, and woke in a bed half empty and cold. As he'd warned, her new husband was gone. The house was quiet.

She swung her legs onto the floor of the sleeping chamber and felt its chill on the soles of her feet. The blossoms on their bed had browned and fallen to the floor, her wedding ribbons curled among them. The smell of incense had given way to the musty dampness of wet stone. The one tapestry, she saw now, was nothing but a woven replica of the red-and-yellow shields of the Petriana. She shivered. Perhaps summer would eventually come and bring some warmth to Britannia, but so far the lengthening days of spring carried a memory of winter and the dank breath of the northern sea. She'd have to learn to dress warmly, as the Britons did.

Valeria went to the chamber door and called for Savia. The older woman came eventually but without hurry, sleepy and cross. Hadn't Savia slept in as well? Pushing Valeria aside, the maidservant made a brisk and businesslike inspection of the bed, clucking approvingly at the blood.

"Now you're a woman. When you bear your first child, you'll have consummated your marriage. But you haven't started yet, I hope."

"You know I don't want a child in this fortress. I'll wait until we're home."

"Did you use the vinegar?"

She nodded, embarrassed. "Don't tell Marcus. He wants a son." She was anxious to change the subject. "I thought my husband would stay with me today."

"He's married to his fortress as well as to you."

"But the day after our wedding?" It was the only day in which Roman custom permitted daytime lovemaking. "He could at least spare a morning."

"You've wasted that morning asleep! And he has five hundred men to attend to. It's his duty to concentrate on the Petriana, and yours to concentrate on him."

"I was wondering how long it would take you to remind me of duty, Savia."

"Roman duty won you this house, this post, and this province. You've got an entire lifetime to see your husband, and if you're like any other wife, you'll get sick of him long before it's over. Now stop feeling sorry for yourself and come to the baths."

The house, Valeria saw, was built around a barren central atrium open to the sky, giving the domicile four wings. The courtyard drank in pale Briton sunlight but had no fountain or plantings to soften its stone. The baths at the rear were more encouraging: a privy above the burble of a piped underground stream with its sponge on a stick to wipe oneself, a fountain of clean washing water, a steam room, and hot and cold plunge baths. Mosaics of dolphins and waving kelp were laid with crude but colorful Briton craftsmanship. Valeria descended into the hot with a sigh and the cold with a gasp, climbing out with her pores shut and her skin goose-pimpled. The physical shock had washed away some of her strange gloom. She was married! It was both accomplishment and relief. Surely, now things would begin.

"You look as if you just awakened yourself, Savia," she observed as her maidservant dried her.

"Rather I was awakened at dawn by banging pots and splashing water," the slave replied. "Your new staff rose perversely early to impress you. I got up to scold the cook, Marta, and she said I was to answer to her. She's a Saxon by birth, as obstinate as any German, and as haughty as an Egyptian. I could barely understand her accent."

"I'll make clear the order of things," Valeria promised. "And you and I must learn to speak and understand Celtic, or they'll be chattering about us like magpies."

"It can be as difficult to command a household staff as a ship of pirates!"

They laughed, having heard a hundred stories to confirm the proverb. Valeria donned her linen underclothes, put on a long tunic, and then pulled over it her woolen stola and fastened it with brooches. How sad to have lost the sea-horse one, a present from her mother. She slipped on socks before her sandals and felt swaddled as a baby. What a sight she'd be in Rome!

"But before I organize the staff, I want to clear my head, perhaps with a tour of our fortress. Can you send for an escort?"

She nibbled on breakfast as she waited.

It did not entirely surprise her that Clodius was the one who eventually answered her summons. He bowed in the atrium. "It seems I've been sent again, my lady."

"Thank the gods," she joked. "My husband has already abandoned me!"

"No man abandons beauty like yours. Rather, he's been abducted by duty. We've received word that there may be news about the ambush. Galba is being sent to get it by helping a barbarian chieftain in a cattle dispute. He's riding with a hundred men."

The realization that Marcus had the power to send a hundred soldiers off into the wilderness gave Valeria a quiet thrill. Here was a tiny flexing of that vast power that reached all the way to Rome. "My husband has been busy, hasn't he?"

"And sends me as poor substitute in his place. I confess I suggested the assignment myself. It's a way for making up for my boorish poetry at your wedding."

"Oh, that's entirely forgiven and forgotten!"

"It's the oaf who is last to forgive his own clumsiness, I'm afraid."

"You were brave to defy those barbarians!"

"Brave, but helpless." He touched his neck. "I allowed us to be surprised."

She didn't contradict him. "Does it hurt?"

"I'll have a scar."

"Which will soon be covered by a Celtic torque of valor!"

They went outside. The flower petals of the night before had been swept from the courtyard, and men and horses were gathering there for the expedition. The cavalry animals weren't fine-boned steeds but shorter, shaggier, more stolid beasts, obviously bred not just for speed but for endurance. They snorted and whinnied, nipping at each other. Each was loaded with equipment for a short expedition: water skin, food bag, holstered throwing lances, cooking utensils, and tarps. The prelude to attack was often a great rattle, as necessary baggage was set aside before a charge.

Soldier's heads swung to look curiously at the woman who was the reason for this expedition, their expressions not unfriendly. Valeria was novel, beautiful, aristocratic, and newlywed, and this foray was a welcome break from post routine.

Galba was waiting at their head. "Good hunting, senior tribune," Valeria greeted. "I understand you ride to help one of our allies."

"Rufus Braxus would swell like a toad to hear you call him that."

"He's a chieftain?"

"He'll tell you he's a prince of the Novantae tribe, sire of nine sons, keeper of three wives, lord of a timbered hill fort, commander of eighty spears, and blood-bound to five high families. I'll tell you he's farmer, merchant, shepherd, drover, smuggler, cheat, and thief, who uses Roman money to carve a bigger stink-hole than he could by himself. As a result he's loud, ignorant, blasphemous, boastful, vain, sly, and lazy."

"In other words, a Briton," Clodius said.

"Aye, junior tribune, a Briton. A Celt. A barbarian. He helps us with word of the tribes farther north, and then tells them of Roman intentions. He's a border man, as close to an ally as we get in these parts. Now his neighbor, Caldo Twin-Axe, has stolen twenty head. Braxus promises information if we help get them back."

"Is such theft common?" She was fascinated by this glimpse of border politics.

"Braxus no doubt stole the same cows himself the season before. It's their sport."

Decurions reported the men ready; Galba bowed his good-bye and began shouting orders. The line of assembled troopers began to uncoil, making for the barrel arch of the north gate. A legionary standard, cavalry pennants, and dragon-head banners jutted into the air. As the column moved, the open heads of the dragons filled the fabric behind, inflating it, and so the cavalry rode out of the fortress with the bodies of serpents writhing above their helmets.

"They're so imposing," Valeria said.

"Which is why they ride forth," Clodius replied. "To show our power. Come, let's watch from a tower."

The buildings of Petrianis were packed ten feet apart. The junior tribune pointed out the granary, the saddler's shed, and the hospital as they passed. "Good doctoring is the most powerful recruiting tool the army has." Beyond was an armory, noisy with working soldiers. German recruits were hammering dents out of old armor. Syrians were shaping and fletching arrows from aspen, yew, and pine. Numidians were sorting river stones that would be fired from slings or catapults. The armory had a pungent smell of metal shavings, olive oil, and animal fat, used to combat rust.

"Because of the ambush, the post is sharpening preparations," Clodius explained.

She was taken aback by the industry. "I didn't mean to start a war. I fought them off with a brooch pin!" Since he grimaced at this unintentional comparison, she searched for another question. "How did they know we'd be in the forest?"

"Our journey was no secret, and our progress slow. I made a bad choice."

"It was at my insistence, Clodius."

"We shared the mistake."

"Perhaps we've all just had bad luck."

He shook his head. "I think things happen for a reason."

Behind the armory were the stables of the cavalry, and they decided to pass through inside. The animals snorted and whinnied as the pair walked by the stalls, some begging for a treat, and Valeria's heart quickened. "I'd like to pick one to go riding," she said. "Ride fast again, like in the forest. That white mare, perhaps, with the gray forehead."

"A good eye. See how she's got the chest and legs for speed? Wide nostrils for stamina? And the mane falls to the right." "Is that important?"

"All Roman soldiers must be right-handed, so their shields are uniformly on the left to maintain formation. A horse's bare neck lets a cavalryman's shield hand rest on its muscles and guide the horse while he fights."

"You sound quite the expert."

"I've read the classic advisories, from Xenophon to Virgil." "I hear the Celts have women who ride. Women who are war riors!"

"Which makes us the Roman and they the barbarian," he jibed. There were long heaps of fodder near the fortress wall, the hay roofed with tile for protection against flaming arrows. In one corner was a kiln and clay. Adjacent was a blacksmith shop, next to that a glassworks, and beyond a carpentry woodshed perfumed with wood chips.

"It seems less a fort than a factory," Valeria remarked. "It has to be, at civilization's end. The army has taught the world. A full legion employs architects, surveyors, plumbers, doctors, stonecutters, glass fitters, coppersmiths, armorers, wagon makers, coopers, and butchers." He grinned. "My dreams of martial glory have been tempered by my duties managing manure."

They mounted to the top of a tower, Clodius guiding her around a wooden ballista and its rack of darts and pointing north. "Out there, Valeria, is the end of the world."

She looked. There was a ditch directly below the wall, pools of rainwater at its bottom. Then a steep slope beyond to a valley, all shrubs and trees chopped away to preserve a clear field of fire. Nor could there be surprise: the view beyond seemed endless, a rolling panorama of moor and wood and fen and ridge and ponded water, as clearly seen as if she were a bird. Wisps of smoke marked a few crude farmsteads. She could still see the line of Galba's cavalry, riding north, lance heads glinting in the sun.

"How did the ambushing Celts ever cross this barrier?"

"That's what Galba hopes to learn from Braxus."

She looked back at the fort and the roofs of the village clustered beyond. Then the river, and beyond that the villa where she'd been married. What a little empire a praefectus governed! She turned to sight along the Wall itself, a bony crest that stretched as far as the eye could see. "Like the back of a dragon."

"A poetic description," Clodius complimented. He was standing quite close, perhaps closer than proper now that she was married, and yet his torso gave her some protection from the breeze and so she was secretly glad of it. He was trim, rather handsome, and solicitous in his eager way. Clodius was like a brother, she told herself, and Marcus still remote, like her… father.

She was shamed at the sudden comparison that had come unbidden into her mind.

"It's designed to intimidate as much as block," Clodius went on. "Any barbarian realizes the army that built this bulwark represents a power beyond their imagination."

"We're safe, then."

"Life is never safe. It's the possibility of death that defines life."

"You sound like Galba," she teased. "Are you acquiring his grim-ness?"

"His realism." He touched his throat.

She turned around, taking it all in. "This fortress is grim like your soldier's philosophy, isn't it? It has the feel of a prison."

"It doesn't lock us in. Only others out."

"So I want to see this wild world of yours, Clodius. I want to go riding!"

He was watching her carefully, trying to mask his attraction. By the gods, if he were Marcus, he wouldn't leave her alone for an instant, let alone the first day of their married life! He was guilty at his fascination, but escorting her was like rubbing a wound, exacerbating it and yet soothing it at the same time. Now he kept his voice carefully flat. "With your husband's permission, perhaps."

"South of the Wall, to be safe." She gave him an impish smile, trying to seduce his support. "A test of your defenses."

"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."