Saviour of Rome

IX

There had been times in his life when Valerius felt the saddle was his only home. He’d travelled from one edge of the Empire to the other: endured avalanches crossing the Alps, traversed the length of Germania pursued by crazed Batavian auxiliaries, marched over the parched plains of southern Armenia on the way to a victory that never was, and ridden the length of Roman Syria in the company of the woman who would become his wife. Now the mountains of northern Hispania awaited him.

It helped that his escort consisted of a good-natured group of auxiliary horse soldiers from the First cohort of the Faithful Vardulli. The men were on detachment to Pliny, but the main element of their unit remained in Britannia. Their cheerful demeanour told him they were pleased to be back in their native land carrying out ceremonial duties for the new governor rather than playing hide and seek in the mountain mists with the Ordovices or the Deceangli.

‘But it’s good to be in the saddle,’ said Abilio, the escort’s decurio. A twenty-year veteran, he had keen dark eyes and moustaches that drooped to his chin, a style favoured by most of his men. ‘You soon tire of spending hours polishing parade helmets and it’s not good for a cavalryman to let his backside get soft.’

Valerius returned his grin. ‘A Thracian archer of my acquaintance once told me a proper cavalryman should have a backside like leather …’

‘And thighs that could crack a nut,’ Abilio confirmed with a bark of laughter. A distinctive brass helmet fitted with ornate cheekpieces hung by a strap from his shoulder and he wore a vest of light chain armour. Like his men’s his legs were encased to the knee in striped braccae; a heavy cavalry spatha hung from his belt and he carried a seven-foot spear. ‘I like the Thracians,’ he said. ‘Born in the saddle and prepared to follow orders. Not like those mad Pannonian bastards. They’d start a fight in an empty room and charge through a stone wall just to show how hard they were.’

On the second day, they emerged from the coastal mountains that guarded Tarraco on to a great open plain, skirting round the city of Ilerda, where Divine Caesar had famously defeated Pompey the Great. The weather stayed fine and they bypassed the doubtful pleasures of the Imperial guest houses that dotted their route. Instead, they camped in the open, only visiting towns when they needed to change their mounts and the pack horses carrying their supplies. Valerius gained his companions’ respect by volunteering to share their duties despite his unusual status as a more-or-less guest. Soon the saw-toothed rampart of the Pyrenees mountains dominated their eastern horizon, while to the west a thick haze shimmered over the fertile, cultivated plain.

Pliny’s courier Marius, a legionary cavalryman, was, like most of his kind, young, intelligent and reticent to the point of secretive. He kept to himself and passed his time scratching at pieces of bark with the end of a burned twig, much to the amusement of the Vardulli. Still, it was difficult to be part of such a small company and not converse in some way. By the time they reached Esca he was comfortable enough to join the desultory conversation around the campfire. Valerius was curious about what he’d been doing with the twig and the bark. After some persuasion, Marius shyly showed him a series of remarkably lifelike drawings he’d made of the auxiliaries. There was even one of Valerius.

‘Do I really look like that?’ The man staring back at him had a hard, almost hawkish expression only softened by the sardonic twist to his lip, courtesy of the old knife wound that scored his cheek. Implacable obsidian eyes stared out from below unruly dark hair. He thought of himself as young, but in the drawing he looked what he was, a worn-out veteran of a dozen wars.

‘It’s probably not very good.’ Marius offered him another version, full length from a distance.

Valerius smiled. ‘Better, but,’ he laughed, ‘you seem to have forgotten this.’ He raised the wooden fist.

Marius gaped. ‘I didn’t know, sir.’

Young soldiers, though they feigned disinterest, were always curious to know what had happened to Valerius’s hand. Normally, he would only say that he’d lost it in battle. Tonight he wanted to win Marius’s confidence, so he treated his companions to the defence of Colonia, and the last stand in the Temple of Claudius in all its horror and heroism.

‘Suetonius Paulinus awarded me the Corona Aurea.’ All the men not on guard lay by the fire listening and Valerius let his eyes drift around the circle of attentive faces until they fell on Marius. ‘And the Emperor Nero himself placed it upon my brow.’

‘What glory,’ the young man cried. ‘To have the Emperor’s favour.’

‘An emperor’s favour can be a fickle thing,’ Valerius shrugged. ‘And I would give back that golden bauble and all the glory and the honour to see the faces of my comrades and hear their voices one last time.’

The veteran soldiers murmured agreement, but the eyes of the young men still glowed with visions of fame and valour.

‘And Boudicca? Is it true what they say of her?’

‘Ah, Boudicca.’ Valerius allowed his voice to quicken and his imagination to run free. ‘As tall as a rowan tree, with hair of burnished copper and breasts like the sweetest melons all painted gold …’

They grinned at each other. This was the kind of story a soldier could appreciate, even if he didn’t believe a word of it.

When the flames of the campfire died to a dull flicker Valerius unrolled his blanket beside Marius.

The young cavalryman turned to face him. ‘What was Boudicca really like?’

‘A handsome woman consumed by hate,’ Valerius admitted. ‘But we had given her reason to hate. Tell me, Marius, if you are willing, how things stand in Asturica? I heard different tales in every tavern in Tarraco.’

Marius hesitated only a moment to marshal his thoughts and knowledge into a coherent form. ‘I’m not surprised, sir, because the situation is confused whichever way you look at it. On the one hand there are whispers that the gold is running out and we’ll soon all be going home to Italia. Yet speak to a common miner and he’ll tell you of great nuggets gleaming in the lamplight just waiting to be plucked. It depends, of course,’ his voice took on a scholarly tone, ‘what kind of mine you are speaking of. There are several different methods, producing ore, dust or, more rarely, the sought-after nuggets.’

‘You are an expert, I find, young Marius?’

Marius gave him an embarrassed glance. ‘If I have given that impression I apologize, sir,’ he laughed. ‘I only know what I have heard in passing. The locals are stubborn folk, tight-lipped and secretive, but treat them with courtesy and show an interest in the natural philosophy of their land and one or two will show a different side. Even those, though, have become more distant lately.’

‘Why would that be?’

Marius’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘The ghosts of the past are stirring.’

Valerius wondered if he’d misheard. ‘What?’

‘That’s what they say, sir. I believe it means that some among them see an opportunity to return to the old ways, before the mine workings flattened their mountains, filled in their valleys and poisoned their rivers.’

‘Can it really be so bad?’

‘Oh, yes,’ came the matter-of-fact reply. ‘You only have to look at the Red Hills to understand how destructive it can be. Like your Boudicca, sir, they have reason to dislike us, and now that we have been weak for so long – I mean relatively speaking, of course – it may be that some of them believe they have an opportunity to do something about it.’

‘A rebellion? Do they understand what that would mean?’

‘I couldn’t say, sir.’ Marius’s voice had turned defensive, as if he felt he’d said too much. ‘It is difficult to tell with them. All I can say is that were I in their place I would not be satisfied. And then there are the bandits.’

‘I was told they had become more active and daring?’ Valerius invited a more detailed explanation, but the younger man only shrugged.

‘That may be the case, sir, but I haven’t witnessed it.’

‘You think I was misled?’

‘All I can say, sir, is that we – that is my commander – responds to every bandit attack with all the speed and force he can muster. Inevitably, by the time we reach the site the bandits have been fought off or have fled. They are never strong enough to take a full convoy, but one or two wagons will be missing, with perhaps a casualty or two among the wagon drivers or muleteers. The thing is, apart from the usual signs of disturbance around the camp or ambush site, any tracks fade and then vanish within a few hundred paces. It is as if the raiders suddenly take to the air. That’s why we – I mean the more superstitious among the men – talk about The Ghost.’

‘The Ghost?’

‘Laugh at me if you wish, sir,’ the courier said defensively, ‘but the men have a pure dread of ever meeting him.’

‘I would not laugh at you, Marius,’ Valerius said gently. ‘Tell me, does this Ghost have a name?’

‘In the Asturian tongue he is called “Nathair”. A man of almost supernatural powers, newly returned from only the gods know where. He can pin a butterfly to a tree with his knife point and is so fast with a sword that anyone who faces him is dead before they even realize he has unsheathed it. They say he cannot be killed.’

Valerius experienced a chill at the familiar list of accomplishments. ‘Does he have a face, this Ghost?’

‘He keeps it masked. Only the shades of his victims have ever seen it.’

‘Nathair?’ He knew the answer to his question before it left his lips.

‘It means Snake, sir.’

Serpentius?