Hadrian's wall

XXXVI

As I did in the beginning, once more I depend on the crisp and soldierly memory of the centurion Longinus. He hobbles to me on a crutch, a good sign that infection of his smashed foot has not advanced up his leg. I remember his challenge to me when I chose him as the first to be interviewed. He demanded that I understand Hadrian's Wall. Am I any closer now than I was before?

"My congratulations, centurion. You appear to be recovering."

"I'm too old to recover. The best a warhorse can hope for is to endure. So I endure the pain of this damned foot, I endure the bureaucracy of the retirement list, I endure the prattle of nurses, and I endure the dirty jokes of decurions that I first heard two decades ago."

"It sounds like my interview might be an improvement."

His smile is wry. "When an imperial inspector becomes amusement, you know life isn't worth piss. It's time to get out of Eburacum."

"To your farm?"

He collapses, without invitation, onto a stool. "No, I'd never be able to work it, not as a cripple. I'm selling it. An old trumpeter named Decinus has opened a wheelwright shop and has offered to teach me the parts I can do sitting down. We'll fart and drink and curse together and keep each other from being too lonely. It's not a bad fate."

Sunset, sunset. Each of us must come to an end, and why isn't the way better prepared? A warrior's death is not so terrible, perhaps, compared to retirement. And yet how ready would I ever be for a soldier's death? "You are a brave man, centurion."

"You learn in the army to do what you have to do. Afterward, some call it courage." He stretched out his injured leg.

I make a note to acknowledge his professionalism. This man is Rome. "I want to go back to when the barbarians attacked. I know the outcome of the battle, of course, but not its course. Was Galba really in league with the barbarians? What did he intend?"

Longinus considers a moment. "Galba was in league with himself."

"He did not really let the Celts through the Wall?"

"Of course he did! But he had a grander plan. Galba knew he couldn't beat Rome, not in the long run. Galba knew that even though the woman had been jailed, her return had seeded her husband with confusion and doubt. So he devised a battle plan that betrayed everyone but himself."

"You approved of this plan?"

"All the officers did, including Marcus, because it seemed brilliant. It had just one flaw, which didn't become apparent until the fighting."

"What flaw?"

He laughs. "There were more of them than we thought!"

"So it was not Valeria's fault. It was all imperial politics and the shifting of legions and the conspiracies of the tribes."

Longinus shakes his head. He's not a man to forgive or forget, not with his foot crushed. He's not a man to blame human failings on the maneuverings of armies. "The woman brought Marcus. The praefectus ignited the war and tried to transfer Galba. She inflamed the barbarian Caratacus. And Galba outwitted us all."

I sigh. "Galba would do well at imperial court." It's an impolitic statement to make to a near stranger, but I cannot resist it. One either plots to survive in Rome, or one stays on its fringes, as I have done. In a sense, my job is a form of hiding. Galba, in contrast, chafed at being on the fringe. "What was Marcus thinking?"

"That it was he who would win the battle and the glory. That was the genius of Galba's plan. Caratacus, Marcus Flavius, and Galba himself all felt they were on the path to victory."

"It was a trap for both Arden and Marcus."

"Engineered by Galba Brassidias." Longinus smiles thinly. "I rode withMarcus and got to see it play out. It's a beautiful spectacle, battle, until it's over and you're left with the stink of the dead and the screams of the wounded."

I look at his foot. "Did you scream?"

"Do you think I remember?"

We sit in silence for a moment. The gulf between us that he hinted at in our first meeting seems less deniable now. It is the gulf between virgin and harlot, or play and work. I have been around soldiers my entire career, but always afterward: questioning decisions, plumbing motives, and passing judgment on an experience I don't understand.

What do my reports really matter?

"What is it like getting ready for battle?" I impulsively ask.

Longinus isn't impatient with my question. He understands that I truly want to know. "Like prayer," he replies. "Not just that you're praying, though all sensible men do so, but that your preparation for combat is a ritual itself, a form of meditation. I don't know what it's like for others, but my mind is always full. I sharpen all my weapons. I eat sparingly, for quickness and to avoid infection from a stab in the gut. I order and reassure my men, taking their measure, and go over in my head what we must do as a unit and what I must do individually if faced with open combat: each thrust, each parry, and every fighting trick I've ever learned and taught. I dream the battle before I fight it. There's this solemn rasping of blades being honed, and the smell of oil being wiped from steel and applied to leather. The talk is quiet."

"You are not afraid?"

"Any sensible man is afraid. But soldiers have chosen their lot long ago and are far too busy trying to survive to let fear overmaster them. Besides, you have your comrades, and you share your fate with theirs. That's a kind of friendship a civilian can never know. We depend on each for our lives, and there's bittersweet love in that."

"Love? In a battle?"

"War isn't about hate, inspector. It's about communion."