The Encircling Sea

III

BRIGITA’S PARENTS WERE shocked when the two of them rode up to the little cluster of round huts with their tall conical roofs. Her father was patching up some of the thatch on one of the huts used for their cows, and he broke down, coughing hard amid his tears, and had to be helped off by two of his sons. Her mother prayed loudly, thanking Taranis and Vinotonus and Cocidius and any other god she could remember for answering her prayers. In a moment, half a dozen grubby and thin children, all with the same snub nose and bright red hair, were around them, wailing and yelling. The father begged him to stay and share their food, the others all howled the same thing and when Brigita joined them he agreed.

He had learned a lot from the girl on the ride here. Perhaps it was the realisation that she was about to go home or because there was no one else apart from him, she had started to talk and then kept on going, telling him every detail of what had happened. She seemed to need to speak as if that would consign it all to the past, so he had let her, not asking questions and simply listening.

At first she spoke about the farm, and how hard it was to feed them all when her parents did not let her run things properly. ‘The old axe rusted and then snapped because father did not look after it. The goat no longer gave enough milk, so it was better to cook it or sell it and we needed something to buy the new axe – and a spade and some seed if I raised enough. You can get good deals in the market at Coria if you know where to look.’ Her assurance was coming back, and Ferox was pleased to see it. He did not quite understand why it was that this one child seemed brighter and more organised than the rest of her family. Everything to her appeared as a problem needing a solution. If she had had been born in the empire to a family with even a little money, he suspected that she would have made ten times as much by the time she was fifteen and a hundred times as much before she was twenty.

The northerners had appeared from nowhere when she was heading for Coria. They were not gentle, but did not really hurt her – neither did they touch her that way. They did slit the goat’s throat and carved off enough meat for several meals. That was not news to Ferox, for he had found the carcase and seen several of their camp fires after her family had sent word to him and he began the chase. They took Brigita one evening and then Aphrodite the next morning, finding her in a secluded glade a little nearer to the garrison town. ‘She was humping with a man, when he should have been looking after that big horse.’ Ferox was more surprised by her directness than her evident disapproval of someone avoiding work. ‘They all laughed at him as he sprang up in terror and ran for the chestnut, leaving her to them. Didn’t do him any good, for they rode him down and speared him before he could reach it. It was horrible, but they did not harm her. Not then, and just led us off to a patch of woodland where they camped. A man met them later. A thin man, but he kept his hood low and I never saw his face. They talked to him, and a little later the youngest one stayed with us, while the others went off with this man. The boy was kind with us, but kept us tied and said he would hurt us if we tried to escape. He tried very hard to look fierce, but I think he was afraid.

‘After darkness fell the four of them came back with Genialis. I think the boy was really relieved to see them. The other man had gone. Genialis was bleeding from the lip and nose, and bound by the wrists. He cursed them and they were not gentle with him. I do not like him,’ she added and Ferox smiled.

Most of the rest about their journey north confirmed what he had already guessed. They had kept away from people, even as they passed beyond the tribes allied to Rome, and kept away from the most frequented paths. Otherwise they drove the animals and their captives along. When one of the warriors wanted to rape the slave girl, Segovax told him to wait until they were safe. ‘“There is no time to waste. If we’re not back by the next new moon then all of them will die,”’ Brigita said, frowning as she tried to remember his exact words. ‘“If we get back by then I’ll let you do whatever you want, but for now keep it to yourself.” Again and again as the days passed he reminded them of how they must get home to save them, but once I overheard him speaking quietly to the one with the mottled face. He was worried that they would not make it in time. “The black men have no mercy. They are men of the night. They will kill and eat them all.”’ The girl looked terrified as she repeated the words. ‘They say that there are demons and monsters in the far north that devour the flesh of men.’

‘So they say,’ Ferox answered, and for a while they spoke no more while he tried to work out what it all meant. There were plenty of strange things in the world, but as yet he had never seen a monster, still less one that could arrange for a man to meet the northerners and guide them to their quarry. It all confirmed his suspicion that they had come to take Genialis, and it sounded as if they had been made to come by threats. That permitted a little sympathy, if not enough to make him regret catching up with them. The new moon had risen thirteen days ago, so whoever was being held and threatened was most likely dead by now. Segovax was not an easy man to frighten and was unlikely to have been bluffed by someone who did not plan to live up to their threats.

Ferox sat cross-legged by the fire, surrounded by the boisterous noise of the children as they chattered away, but for all his efforts could not understand why anyone from so far away would be interested in Genialis. Neither Segovax nor his brother were easy men to push around, and yet someone had compelled them to raid so that they could snatch the youth. Something odd was happening, and all his senses told him that it was not over. He wondered whether Acco was involved, but could not see anything that the druid could gain. After a while the sheer joy of the family swept over him and he simply laughed with them, trying to judge how much he must eat not to give offence, while knowing that they were poor and not wanting to take too much meat for his share.

It was dark by the time he was able to make his farewells and leave. Nudged by Brigita, the father presented him with a pale blue stone threaded onto a slim leather thong.

‘It is lucky,’ the man assured him, his eyes a little glassy from the smoke of the fire and the beer he had drunk.

Ferox thanked him, and placed it around his neck. Then he left and rode into the night. It was gone midnight when he reached the burgus, the small square fortlet with its single gate where he spent most of his time when he was not riding out. It was now the closest thing he had to a home and it felt empty and lifeless after the crowded and smoky roundhouse filled with the excited and happy family. The guard in front of the entrance was a little late in challenging him, but otherwise all seemed well. Another man, a Thracian who was almost at the end of his twenty-five years in the army, nodded with the licence granted to old hands and then rang the bell to announce his arrival. Ferox went under the gate, but it was too dark to read either of the painted signs fixed over the entrance, the larger one informing the world that this burgus had been built by Legio II Adiutrix, and the one above with the name Syracuse. Years ago, he had read that the Emperor Augustus had a room in the palace where he would go when he did not want to be disturbed, and that sometimes he would stay there for days on end, speaking to no one, working on great legislation in privacy or just pottering about on little projects for his own amusement. For some reason, the story had stayed with him, and it had been his little joke to dub this unimportant little outpost with the name.

The guard turned out, just two men because there were only a couple of dozen stationarii there these days, less than half the original garrison. The rest were asleep, although no doubt a fair few had just been roused by the bell and were now cursing whichever fool had rung it. The Thracian rang it once and did not keep on, which meant that it was not an alarm, so no need to worry. There rarely was any need to worry up here, for things had been quiet for more than a year.

Ferox dismissed the guard, and as he rode to the far end of the courtyard where his own quarters lay he saw glimpses of lamplight from the cracks in the shutters. There were no petitioners waiting for him at Syracuse, which was not really surprising at this hour, although Crescens assured him that a lot of people had come over the last weeks.

‘The usual things, sir. Cattle, sheep and other livestock allegedly stolen. A shepherd claims to have been attacked and robbed. No killings, though.’ The curator had come to his quarters to report and now held up the writing tablet with a detailed list of the claims. Crescens was in charge of the day-to-day running of the little outpost and the most senior man there whenever the centurion was away. Slightly built and very neat in his appearance, even at this time of night, he was a fussy, unsympathetic cavalryman eager for promotion, but had mellowed in the last two years and now treated the men fairly instead of parading the power brought by his temporary appointment. ‘Most people seemed to know you weren’t here, so didn’t come.’

‘Any news?’

Crescens opened the writing tablet. Although he ran the place efficiently enough, no one was ever likely to accuse him of imagination.

Ferox waved him down. ‘I do not mean the appeals. Is there anything else I should know about?’

The curator frowned. ‘A couple of men were sick with ague at the end of last month. Repairs to the roof of the gate-tower are still awaiting a supply of wooden shingles, supposed to be on their way. Also, the two new men allocated as stationarii have not arrived, but word has come that they are at Vindolanda. One is in hospital and the other under arrest charged with drunkenness, abusive language to a superior officer, and urinating against the wall of the principia. The man in hospital may also be charged if he recovers.’

‘Some high drama, no doubt,’ Ferox said, ‘or perhaps low farce?’

Crescens had read the words without emotion and did not appear to register the centurion’s irony. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, and went on to report other minor digressions or omissions of duty committed by men who were under his charge here at Syracuse. Ferox let his mind wander. He had had little hope of learning anything useful from the curator. Crescens was not the sort of man to sniff the air and sense what the locals or even the soldiers under his command were feeling and thinking.

‘Thank you, curator,’ Ferox said when the man reached the end of his list. ‘There does not seem to be anything urgent in that lot, so I shall bid you goodnight and apologise for having disturbed your rest.’

‘Just doing my duty, sir,’ Crescens assured him. ‘Happy to do it.’

I’m sure you are, Ferox thought to himself as the man stamped out. The curator was very keen to please these days, hoping to be recommended for promotion and sent back to his unit.

Philo had been hovering in the background, and now swept in with a bowl of warm water and a towel and a cup of posca, the rough drink of soldiers and slaves. The little Jewish boy was seventeen and looked younger. If Crescens always strove to be the epitome of military smartness, the young slave far outstripped him in his uncanny neatness. As usual his tunic was spotless and bleached so well that the white wool appeared to shine.

‘Thank you,’ Ferox said to him. ‘And now you can turn in as well. The morning will be soon enough for you to set about cleaning all these clothes.’ He could sense the lad’s disappointment, and after weeks out in the wilds both he and his clothes were a mess. ‘Go to sleep,’ he insisted before the boy attempted to persuade him. ‘I need to think, and I need to be alone. But thank you again.’ Ferox smiled to reinforce the words.

‘I am glad you are back, lord,’ Philo said and obeyed, going to the side room containing his cot and his few worldly possessions.

Ferox sighed once the boy had gone. Philo always made him feel that he was not really good enough to own such a slave, and even that he was so unutterably filthy and irregular in his habits that he was not really fit for human society. A philosopher might say that this was a good reminder that there was no justice in the world. A bone-weary centurion had not the energy to probe such ideas, so he washed, had some of the drink, and then sat on the stool and stared at the bare plaster walls. After a while he took the blue stone from around his neck and stared at that instead.

It was not worth much, at least not to a Roman who could buy plenty of cheap jewellery, most of it brighter and more colourful. For a family who barely scraped along, it was a treasure. Ferox was not sure whether this made any claims of good luck associated with the trinket unlikely. Maybe their life would have been a lot worse without it. In his experience, bad as things were, they could usually be worse. They were a happy bunch in their way, and if a few of their children had perished that was a sorrow experienced by many and it did not haunt them. They had young Brigita, who might well organise them all and bring plenty. He chuckled aloud at the thought of what might have happened if she had gone north and been sold as a slave. Pity the family who bought her, for she would soon be running the place for their own good – like Philo, only a good deal more determined. Or they would have beaten her until she submitted. The smile went. At least he could be pleased that she was home – a real home, with her own family. He felt very alone.

Ferox had loved once, a woman with a dark beauty, and for a few months he felt as if he had had a home. She had picked out Philo at a slave market and he had bought the small boy to please her. Back then he did anything he could to please her. Then she had left, in the middle of the grim business when he was tasked with investigating the officers involved in the failed coup led by Saturninus against the late and unlamented Emperor Domitian. He had done his job, even though he soon realised that the men under suspicion were dying, whether or not he discovered evidence of their guilt. He drank, and was surely gloomy and difficult, but he did not think that that was the only reason why she left. There was something else, something from the past that she had made him promise never to ask about. She had gone without word, without a clue, leaving only Philo behind, his pitch-black hair and dark eyes reminders of hers. It had broken him and he had drunk even more heavily, and in the end they transferred him to Britannia and sent him to this nowhere place in the far north because no one else wanted him. The Silures were peaceful, his grandfather already dead from fever, and he no longer mattered politically. He was made regionarius of one of the least important bits of land in the empire and left to rot if that was what he wanted.

Then two years ago, he met her. It was on a day when he was too hungover to care much whether he lived or died, and he and Vindex had ridden to warn a coach and party of cavalry about an ambush. They were too late, but managed to rescue the lady and her maid who were riding in the carriage. The lady was Sulpicia Lepidina, wife of Cerialis, and he had begun by mistaking her for the slave. Somehow, they had all survived, and later he learned that the attackers were the Stallion’s men, wanting to take her and sacrifice her to make a great work of magic. Cerialis was from the royal line of the Batavians, which made her royal in their eyes, and so of greater value. He had saved her then, and then a second time when there was an attack in the fort itself. It was Samhain, the feast of the dead, when spirits from the Otherworld walked on the earth and the laws of life did not apply, and he had come to her then, found her, and they had made love.

On the Kalends of August the following year, the Lady Sulpicia Lepidina, femina clarissima, daughter of a former consul and wife to the prefect, gave birth to a son. Before she had whispered the news to him, he had known that the child was his. Publicly it did not matter, for Cerialis, who already had three children and so had met the laws set down by all the emperors since Augustus, had acknowledged the child as his, naming him Marcus Flavius Cerialis and accepting the substantial expense of paying for another son’s education and career.

He had rarely seen the lady since then, and never been alone with her, but he hoped that she sensed his joy and knew that he would protect her and their secret forever. The law was unlikely to be generous to him, for adultery was an offence against the Republic as well as the individual, threatening the family life on which the state depended. If discovered he would be dismissed from the army, perhaps even sent into exile on some bleak rock – that is if they could find one more out of the way than here. He might even be executed, for it was rumoured that Trajan’s views on such things were especially strict. None of that really mattered to him. Worse – far worse – was that she would be humiliated publicly, divorced and probably sent to a bleak rock of her own.

Ferox had a son he had glimpsed just twice, a boy he would never hold, probably never know, and certainly could never acknowledge or be acknowledged by and all the while he loved a woman who was married to another man and could never be his. For the moment his joy triumphed over his despair at the hopelessness of it all, but he worried that he was feeling the urge to start drinking again.

He clutched the blue stone tightly. Nine days after a boy was born Roman parents gave him the bulla, a gold charm worn around the neck until the boy became a man. The Silures did something similar ten days after birth, and they gave the child a stone or bead on a thread, much like this one. Ferox felt the smooth surface with his fingers and clutched it tight.

When Philo found him the next morning he was still somehow perched on the stool, body slumped forward onto the table. The slave sniffed, but there was no scent of beer or wine, or indeed any of the old signs he had not seen for well over a year. His master was clutching something in his hand so tightly that his knuckles were white.