Hadrian's wall

IV

Many Romans believe slaves are morally unreliable, but I, Draco, regard them as the most observant of witnesses. True, they will steal. Yes, they will lie. Of course they are lazy. They lack even the patient virtues of a domesticated, animal. Yet a careful listener can turn this lack of character to his advantage. Slaves are shameless eavesdroppers and tireless gossips, their primary entertainment the foibles of their betters. You can learn a lot from a smart slave. And this one, before me, is one of the smartest.

She annoys me already.

Her name is Savia. Wet nurse turned substitute mother. Servant turned handmaiden, scold, and chaperone. Every highborn Roman girl like the missing Valeria should have one, and most do. Savia is, of course, a Christian, like so many of the lower classes, but unlike some I cannot afford to be intolerant of naive beliefs in a peasant god and a happy death. I use every eye and ear I can recruit. A good Christian can be as upright as a good pagan, in my experience. Or as venal. There are scoundrels enough for all religions.

So. Savia is well fed and plump, despite her present incarceration, and was probably not uncomely a score of years ago. She would still feel warm enough in any bed, I judge. Now her hair is streaked with gray, her face has the paleness of incarceration, and her look is quicker and more direct than is proper. That intelligence, again: it cannot be hidden. She is a survivor, too, having passed through the recent tumult entirely unscathed. Legend to the contrary, it is the rare slave willing to die for her mistress.

So I have this image of brutally efficient Galba, the frustrated subordinate, but that's hardly enough to explain the catastrophe I am investigating. Something more happened on Hadrian's Wall, something that led to incaution and treason, and it appears to have centered on the owner of this slave, the lady Valeria. I've summoned Savia from prison to explain her mistress so I can understand a woman who is no longer here. The slave, in turn, looks upon me as a potential rescuer. She abhors confinement and has protested it loudly. "I am of the House of Valens!" The soldiers laugh at her.

She sits now in my stone chamber, truculent, flustered, hopeful, wary, vain. She wants as much from me as I from her.

"You served the lady Valeria?"

She sizes me up, then nods with cautious pride. "For nineteen years. Fed her, wiped her, weaned her, and spanked her. Taught her to be a woman. And accompanied her all the way to Britannia-"

"For her wedding to the commander of the Petriana cavalry, Marcus Flavius."

"I saw it arranged in Rome."

"A political or a love match?"

"Both, of course."

I am dissatisfied by an answer so obvious that it's no answer at all. "You avoid my question. Did she love her intended husband?"

"It depends what you mean by love."

"Mean? By the gods, was her motive passion or politics?"

Savia looks at me speculatively. "I wish to help you, master, but confinement has confused my memory." Her eyes flicker around the room as quick as a bird, as if looking for a key to release.

"I've just brought you out of confinement."

"Only for this interview. I've done nothing to deserve that cell!"

"You were imprisoned because you aided an enemy."

"I was imprisoned because I saved my mistress."

I ignore that comment for now. "Still, you'll answer when I ask," I warn grumpily. l can, of course, have her flogged.

She refuses to be frightened, having sensed my lamentable sympathy for her gender and kind. "And I'll remember the past when I have a future."

"You will speak now or be beaten until you do speak!"

"And speak what?" she cries indignantly, as if it is I instead of she in the wrong. "The truth, or the cries of a whipped slave?"

I grimace. But I'm also amused, and struggle not to show it. She's watching me like a sly dog, knowing she is valuable property and a waste to feed in prison. Moreover, I need her story. So I employ silence. Nothing so prompts a companion to speak.

"I'm sorry," she amends. "It's horrid and dirty in my cell."

So I visibly soften, to soften her. "Then help me learn the fate of your mistress."

She leans forward. "I can help most if you take me with you!"

"I have no use for an old maid."

"Then take me and sell me! But it's better to keep me! Look at yourself. You 're as old as I am. You should be retiring to a farm. You could use me there."

The last thing I need in the quiet of my life is this piece of spoiled baggage. Still, at the end of the day the horse will ride harder to the hay than to the whip. I pretend to consider this proposal. "I cannot afford another slave."

"The garrison would almost give me away! I complain too much!"

I laugh. "As if that is a recommendation!"

"I eat too much, too! But I can cook. Better than your servant does now, judging from your scrawny frame."

I shake my head, suspecting she's right. "Listen, impress me with the usefulness of your memory, and I will consider what you suggest. Agreed?"

She sits back. "I'm very useful."

"And you will answer my questions?"

"I'll try, inspector."

I sigh for effect, knowing full well why she'd like me to buy her. A slave enjoys the status of her master. "All right, then. Back to it. Was the marriage a love match?"

She takes a moment to think this time. "It was a marriage of the upper class. Love is irrelevant, don't you think?"

"Yet not the usual dowry."

"It was the man who provided the coin this time, not the woman."

"Marcus needed a good posting?"

"He needed a new start."

"And Valeria's father needed money?"

"Being a senator is expensive. To entertain, to facilitate agreements-"

"You understand these things?"

She smiles. "I lived with Senator Valens longer than his wife."

"And became maidservant to Valeria."

"I instructed that child, as I said."

It is disconcerting, the pride of this slave. No doubt she'd once bedded Valens and was smug with the memory of coupling with a patrician. And Christians! It's their god that gives them their impudence. Their serenity can be infuriating.

"You lived with this woman daily, "I try again. "Was she in love or not?"

"She barely knew Marcus. They'd only met once."

"Her reaction?"

"He was handsome. But old, to her eyes. Thirty-five to her nineteen."

"Yet she did not object?"

"She encouraged the union. She dressed for Marcus, charmed him, and promised obedience to her father's plan. The marriage rescued the senator and was a way for Valeria to get away from Rome. Marriage would please her father, let her escape her mother, and complete herself. Like all young women, she assumed either her husband would match her dreams or she'd teach him to do so."

Of course. Women think weddings the end of problems, instead of their beginning. "Why didn't the marriage take place in Rome?"

"The post was vacant, occupied temporarily by the senior tribune Galba Brassidias. The army wanted the command settled, and Senator Valens was anxious for the money his daughter would bring. The promise was paid, promotion granted, and rather than wait for wedding preparations, Marcus was advised to take the risk of traveling in winter to assume office and clarify command. Talks were concluded in his absence. Valeria followed in March, as soon as the first ships could leave Ostia. Even at that, it was a rough voyage. We anchored three times on the coast of Italy before reaching port in Gaul. All of us were sick."

I nod. I hate the sea. "Then north through Gaul-"

"Tiresome. Bad inns, bad food, and bad company. The river barges were fine, but the mule carts wearying and tedious. It was odd to have the days grow longer and yet colder. And at the Oceanus Britannicus the sea sucked in and out."

"The tide."

"I'd never seen its like."

"It took Caesar by surprise when he first invaded Britannia." Why I offer historical trivia to this woman I can't say.

"I shouldn't wonder."

I plunge ahead, embarrassed by my own digression. "So you crossed the Channel-"

"We'd missed the naval galley and bought passage on a merchant ship. We were sick again, and afraid of pirates. The captain kept waving toward the white cliffs of Dubris, trying to impress a senator's daughter, but none of us cared."

"And came up the Tamesis to Londinium."

"It was all perfectly proper, as you can see. Except for her riding."

"Her what?"

"When crossing Gaul, Valeria became bored. She'd borrow a horse and go trotting ahead in a lady's manner, sidesaddle, accompanied by her bodyguard Cassius."

"A retired soldier?"

"Better. A surviving gladiator."

"And you did not approve."

"She wasn't so bold as to go out of sight, but a Roman lady doesn't ride a horse like some Celtic wench. As I told her! But Valeria was always a willful child. I warned that she'd ride herself barren and be sent home in disgrace, but she just laughed at me. I told her she'd hurt herself and she scoffed. She said her husband-to-be was a cavalry officer and would appreciate a wife who could gallop. I almost fainted."

I try to picture this bold and impudent young woman. Was she vulgar? Immature? Or simply impish? "She had learned how?"

"On her father's estate. He was as hopelessly indulgent when she was a child as he was strict after her menarche. Only I kept any control. She'd have played with wooden swords if her brothers hadn't refused."

"So she was in the habit of not doing what she was told."

"She was in the habit of listening to her heart."

Interesting. Rome's foundation is reason, of course. "I am trying to understand what happened here," I explain. "What kind of treachery."

She laughs. "Treachery?"

"The attack on the Wall."

"I would never call it treachery."

"What then?"

"I'd call it love."

"Love! You said-"

"Not in the way you think. It began in Londinium "

V

"Roman lady!" the peddlers shrieked, lifting their trinkets up into the rain. "Look! The jewels of Britannia!"

Valeria had drawn her hood against the shouts and spring drizzle. Shadowed and thus shielded, she looked down in consternation and amusement at the little navy that had nosed to the bulwarks of her ship. River lighters and skin coracles surrounded the newly anchored Swan like a ragged noose, their grubby captains screeching offers to ferry the Roman passengers to the stone quay of Londinium. Briton women, their hair tangled and clothes sodden from the damp, held up offerings of wet bread, cheap wine, cheaper jewelry, and bared breasts. Children lifted palms to beg for coins, their fingers wiggling like the legs of an overturned beetle. Feral youths shouted advice on lodgings, brothels, and bargains. Dogs barked, a caged rooster crowed, her own captain cursed at the craft scarring his ship's side, and it was difficult to judge what was worse, the noise or the stink.

In other words, her tumultuous greeting to Britannia was as foreign, colorful, and marvelous as she'd hoped. One thousand miles from jaded Rome, and her life was at last beginning! Valeria glanced at the city across the gray water, imagining somewhere beyond it the distant Wall. Soon, soon: her wedding!

"Britlets," scorned the young man at her side, looking down at their besiegers. "Britunculi! Our soldiers called them that after the first battles. Naked, blue, screaming, undisciplined, and filled with bluster until they broke on a shield wall. After which they ran like rabbits." He shook his head. "These, apparently, are their progeny."

"They're offering help, dear Clodius." Valeria was determined not to let her own excitement be soured by the cynicism of her escort, a newly minted junior tribune putting in an obligatory year of military service. "Look how tall they are, how hairy, how pale, how gray-eyed, how bleached! I think they're wonderful." She was at the age when she enjoyed stating opinions boldly, as if trying them on for size. Nor was a senator's daughter impressed by the bright sword and reflexive snobbery of a young officer like Clodius, aristocratic by birth, prosperous by inheritance, and superior by that blissful ignorance that comes from inexperience. Knowing nothing, his type pretended to know everything, including what a young woman like Valeria should think and like and do. It was her game to put them in their place. "Look at the jewelry. There's Celtic craftsmanship there." She squinted playfully. "Of course, it's going green in the rain."

It was disquieting to have to choose a public ferry, Valeria conceded to herself. She could see the government barge still tied to its dock, its red enamel and gilt trim as brilliant as a flower in the gray-green riverscape. Had message of her pending arrival not preceded them across the Channel? Was her masthead banner of senatorial rank not visible from the city wall? Yet the Swan had anchored without a hint of official greeting.

None of her Roman acquaintances would have been surprised by this clumsiness. When told of Valeria's betrothal to an officer posted to Hadrian's Wall, their congratulations had been tinged with condescension. Marcus was rich, of course, but Britannia? Not a single university! Not a game worth reporting! Not a notable poet or artist or writer! The pitying concern had been careful, of course, and all the worse because of it. Some of the baths and villas were by reputation the equal of Italy's, her circle of maidens had comforted; it was only the rest of Britannia that was dark, wet, and filthy. And she was to live in a cavalry fortress? They'd all but shuddered at her fate, a sure sign of the decline of the House of Valens. But the money from Marcus's family would allow her father to sustain his senatorial career, while her own ancestral name would help her new husband's advancement. Let her silly friends sit in Rome! Her fiance wanted glory. Valeria would help him get it.

"Why not enjoy our armada of suitors?" she gamely asked her escort. "Nobody would pay us this much attention in Rome." She dropped a coin, setting off a mad scramble that sent the lighters rocking. The anxious cries of the Britons rose louder.

"Don't do that, Valeria. They're leeches."

"It was only a brass coin." One of the natives had won possession by biting a companion on the ear. The ferocity of their greed surprised her. "My father says that Rome wins loyalty by generosity, not the sword."

"A balance of both, I'd say, each used with careful forethought."

"And I give too little thought?"

"No… Just that your face needs neither sword nor money to earn loyalty."

"Ah, my gallant Clodius!"

Valeria was accustomed to such reactions from boys. Clodius, she knew, was already half in love with her. Her dark and liquid eyes were what first drew men's attention; a gaze of intelligence and will that allured and yet arrested, seducing strangers and yet making them wary. Hers was the magnetism of half girl, half woman, of bold curiosity and lingering innocence. It was advantage and burden that she'd learned to use and endure. The rest of her features reinforced the promise of her eyes. She had a southern beauty, her skin a cross of olive and gold, her hair a silken cascade of black, her lips full, her cheekbones high, and her figure as shapely as the carved wooden swan's head that arched over the tiller. Some speculated there must be Numidian blood in her dark, exotic looks; others opined Egyptian or Phoenician. She favored simple jewelry that would not compete with her: only three rings on her fingers and a single bracelet on one wrist, a tight and fine necklace at her throat, a brooch to hold her cape, and a golden clip in her tresses. Hardly any at all! Certainly none of the jangling ostentation of urban Rome, where women weighted themselves with gold like fetters. She usually dressed modestly and, with her handmaiden's coaching, could remember to stand demurely.

When she was excited, however, Valeria sprang and reached and craned like a boy. It was then that her male escorts would secretly groan at the curve of a hip, the swell of a breast, and wonder what her virgin enthusiasms might someday produce in bed.

The consensus aboard the Swan was that Marcus was a lucky bastard, and his father a sly one, to negotiate for a maiden of such station and desirability. Her parents must have been in extreme financial distress to let her go to the frontier, and Valeria dutiful to have agreed to it. None ever considered that the young woman wanted travel and adventure for herself, that she was well aware of her family's precarious financial position, and that she'd dressed carefully for shy Marcus because she was savvy enough to understand that her father's ruin would have been her own. Now she was saving them all: her father, her future husband, and herself.

The thought gave her a quiet thrill.

Valeria had been puzzled at her girlfriends' praise of her courage. It wasn't as if she were leaving the empire! Britannia had been a Roman province for three hundred years, and living on its border sounded more exciting than dangerous. It would be marvelous to live with rough cavalrymen and their magnificent horses, fascinating to see the hairy barbarians, and thrilling to stroll the crest of Hadrian's famous wall. She was eager to order her own household. Eager to learn of lovemaking. Eager to know her husband. His mind. His desires. His dreams.

"Like piglets at their mother's teat," Clodius muttered about the jostling boats. "We're at the utter edge of empire."

"This utter edge is home to the man I'm marrying," she reminded slyly. "The praefectus in command of your Petriana cavalry."

"My doubts don't include your future husband, lady, who we both know is a man of education, wealth, and refinement. But then he's Roman, not Briton, and deserving of the grace of one such as-I mean of equal stature-or rather…"

She laughed. "I know exactly what you mean, dear clumsy Clodius! How did an officer such as you suffer the ill fortune of not only being assigned to gloomy Britannia, but escorting your superior's betrothed across the Oceanus Britannicus!"

"My lady, I've enjoyed our passage-"

"We were all sick as dogs, and you know it." She gave a mock shudder. "Gracious! I hope I don't see such water again. So cold! So dark!"

"We were all thankful to enter the river."

"So get us the rest of the way ashore, tribune," a new voice suggested impatiently.

It was Savia, gazing longingly at the stone quay of Londinium. The handmaiden was the one bit of home Valeria had brought with her: nag, chaperone, and anchor. Savia knew Valeria's heart better than her mother did and cared more for propriety and promptness than Valeria did. The heaving sea had silenced the slave for two days. Now she was regaining her voice.

"I'm waiting for a ferry suitable to our station," Clodius said irritably.

"You're waiting the day away."

Valeria looked to the city. Londinium appeared civilized enough, she judged. Masts bristled from a thicket of lighters along a quay crowded with bales, barrels, sacks, and amphorae. Beyond the parapets rose the domes and red tile roofs of a respectably sized Roman capital, greasy smoke creating its own pall beneath the overcast. She could hear the rumble of urban commerce and smell the charcoal, sewage, bakeries, and leatherworks even from the water. Somewhere within would be baths and markets, temples and palaces. A long wooden bridge crowded with carts and couriers crossed the Tamesis a quarter mile upriver. On the river's southern shore was marshland, and in the distance low hills.

Such a gray place! So far from Rome! Yet the sight of it filled her with anticipation. Soon, her Marcus! She thought Clodius was making too much of the absence of the official barge, which was just the latest of the indignities any long journey inflicted on travelers. It wasn't as if her future husband could be on hand to greet them anyway. He'd be at his fortress, seeing to his new command. But within a fortnight…

"We simply need to be prudent," Clodius stalled. "Britons are coarse. A third of the island remains unconquered, and what we rule remains rude."

"Rude, or simply poor?" Valeria bantered.

"Poor from poor initiative, I suspect."

"Or by taxation, corruption, and prejudice." She was unable to resist the temptation to bait the boy, a habit her mother said was deplorable for a Roman girl of marriageable age. "And these Britlets of yours prevented Rome from conquering their entire island."

It was supper-table talk picked up from the dining room of her father, and Clodius thought it slightly disreputable that a woman spoke so openly of politics. Still, he enjoyed her attention. "Rome wasn't stopped, it chose to stop, so built his wall to fence away what we didn't want and keep what we did." He took on a lecturing air. "Don't doubt it, Valeria, this is a promising place for a military officer like myself. Trouble gives soldiers a chance for glory. Marcus too! But I don't have to admire the cause of such trouble. By their very nature, Britons are rebel and rascal. The commoners, I mean. The upper class, I'm told, is acceptable."

"You seem quite the expert for a man who hasn't stepped ashore yourself," she teased. "Perhaps you should stay on the boat. I could tell my fiance that Britannia wasn't up to your standards."

In truth, Valeria was apprehensive herself, her teasing a mask for her own anxieties. She was homesick, though like any good Roman woman she wasn't about to admit such weakness. She barely knew Her intended husband, who'd seemed kind during their tentative meeting and quick betrothal in Rome but also big and quiet and, well… old. Certainly she'd never been intimate with a man. Never managed a household. Knew nothing about children. Was she ready to be a wife? Mother? Matron? What if she failed?

"Obey your husband," her father had instructed her. "Remember that duty is the steel that sustains Rome."

"Am I not to love him as well? And he to love me?"

"Love stems from respect," he'd intoned, "and respect follows duty."

It was the kind of admonition she'd heard a thousand times. Girls dreamed of romance. Parents plotted career and strategy.

Valeria looked up at the wet sky. Early April, the landscape an eruption of green, and still this cold cloud! Was it ever truly warm here? Come winter she'd see her first snow, she was sure of it. She was as anxious to get ashore as Savia was, and tired of waiting on Clodius. Why couldn't the youth decide? She saw another lighter and decided it was larger, cleaner, and better painted than the others. "Let's hire that one!"

Her request goaded Clodius to action, and with cries of disappointment, the little flotilla began to break up. The chosen lighter bumped alongside, a fare was negotiated, and there was confused bustle as sailors lowered her belongings into the bottom. Her trousseau was a mere cartload, given the expense of freight from Rome. Valeria's bodyguard Cassius lifted her down as if she were made of glass, plump Savia swayed down upon a rope, and Clodius took his place in the stern with the captain as if he knew something about piloting a boat. Then they made for Londinium's quay, the lighter leaning in the spring wind and an arrow of geese thrumming overhead, aimed toward the north.

Savia took heart. "Look! A welcoming sign from the Christ!"

"If so, they're bringing news of our arrival to my future husband."

Clodius smirked. "Don't they fly over everyone's head, and thus herald a dozen gods?"

"No. They appeared for our arrival."

They cut in and around other craft with practiced ease, a collision threatening at every tack and yet always narrowly avoided to cries of reflexive insult and hearty greeting. The shore was so crowded with craft that there seemed no opening to get ashore, and then a boat cast off and there was a glimpse of mossy stones and iron rings. The lighter pulled up into the wind and drifted neatly to lie alongside. A plank was laid and baggage slung. Valeria skipped ahead, Savia tottered across the plank in hasty reinforcement, and Cassius leaped the gap. Then the Romans were greeted with the kind of clamor that had besieged them on the Swan as merchants, beggars, and food vendors smelled money and class and surged forward.

"Sample the lamb of Londinium, lady? Sustenance after your long journey!"

She shrank from the crowding. "No, thank you…"

"Jewelry for the lass?" It was crude copper.

"I have enough."

"A flagon for you, tribune… This way to the best lodgings… Some help with your baggage… No, I'm best for that!"

Cassius went first to plow like a bull while Clodius haggled with the lighter's master, who suddenly claimed a different understanding of his payment. Valeria and Savia followed the gladiator's lead but were wedged in a press of bodies. The Romans paused, uncertain where to go, while Britons struggled for a better view of the pretty young woman of high station. Women exclaimed, men pushed, and a thick odor of sweat, fish oil, and cheap wine washed over them. Suddenly Valeria felt dizzy.

"This way, lady!" A knobby hand closed on her arm, and she started. It was a plebe, coarse and gap-toothed. Her excitement was turning to alarm.

"Over here!" Another hand clasped her cloak, dragging her the other way.

"Let me go!" She pulled away. Her hood had been knocked back, and her hair was getting wet in the drizzle. Savia shrieked as someone bumped her. A child darted in, and there was a tug and rip. A brooch holding Valeria's cloak was suddenly gone, and it fell open, giving men a clearer glimpse of her form.

"Clodius!"

Her military escort was mired in a tangle of bodies behind. The Britons were laughing at them! A hideous looking man, red-faced and pockmarked, loomed. "Are you looking for a bed, fine lady?" He reached toward her, disgustingly.

"Leave us-"

"Give room!" Clodius shouted. "Which way to the Governor's Gate?"

"A coin first!" someone shouted. "A coin to show you the way!"

"Yes, coins, Romans! Coins for the poor of Britannia!"

Cassius smacked grasping hands away. In reply, a cabbage flew through the air and struck the bodyguard. The gladiator put a hand on his sword. An apple sailed past his head.

"Coins! Charity for poor islanders!"

"What a rubbish heap of a province," Clodius gasped.

"Pity for a people oppressed!" More bits of food flew at them.

"This is a scandal!"

And then, in deliverance, came a sharp cry of pain.