The Iron Hand of Mars

XV

Argentoratum had forgotten how to welcome strangers – assuming it had ever possessed the knack. The town had hosted a huge army base for as long as Rome had taken an interest in Germany, and its good manners had suffered. This was the original home station of my own legion, the Second Augusta. By the time I had been sent out to them in Britain there had been only a few grumpy veterans with any recollection of life on the Rhine, but Rome's foothold in Britain had always seemed perilous, and in any case, we had always hoped to be posted somewhere better, so Argentoratum had always been a place whose name the men of my legion spoke with a proprietary twang.

That did not mean I could call up old favours when I made the mistake of going there.

I had passed through this hard-faced habitation before, en route to even worse places. At least the last time I had met young Camillus Justinus, who had treated me to a dinner I still remembered plus a tour of the high spots and the low life – which were neither as high as Argentoratum liked to think, nor as low as I was hoping for at the time. I had been depressed – a man in love, though one who had not yet noticed it. I wondered now if Camillus had been able to see that his stately sister (whom I was supposed to be escorting, though as usual Helena had placed herself in charge) had been busy caging me like some little pet singing finch. I looked forward to asking him, and sharing the joke. But I would have to find him first.

Big military centres have their drawbacks. At the fort you can never encounter any sentry you recognise. No friendly official from your last visit has ever stayed in post. The town is equally unpromising. The locals are too busy making money out of the soldiery to bother with casual visitors.

The men are brusque and the women contemptuous. The dogs bark and the donkeys bite.

Eventually I dragged Xanthus to the front of a complaining queue at the main guardhouse. I could have registered as an imperial envoy and been poked into a billet inside the fort, but I spared myself a night of being polite to the commissariat. One of the men on guard told me all the bad news I needed to winkle out: they had no listing for the arrival here of any noble tribune's noble sister, and his honour Camillus justinus had left Argentoratum anyway.

'His replacement came two weeks ago. Justinus had completed his tour.'

'What – gone home to Rome?'

'Hah! This is the Rhine; no one gets to escape that easily! Posted on.'

'Where's he stationed now?'

'No idea. All I know is we get the password for the night watch from some beardless little idiot fresh out of philosophy school. Last night's little gem was xenophobia. Today there are three sentinels in the cells for forgetting it, and a centurion's optio is striding round like a bear who just sat on a thorn-bush because he has to do disciplinary reports on his best tent party.'

No legion in Germany at present could risk mistakes by the guard. The province was under strict martial law – for very good reasons – and there was no room for idiotic tribunes who wanted to show off.

'I imagine your clever new boy is listening to a rich lecture from the legate!' I fought back my worries about Helena, concentrating on her brother. 'Maybe Camillus Justinus was deputed to one of the task-force legions?'

'Want me to make enquiries?' The gateman gave every impression he was prepared to help a tribune's friend, but we both knew he did not intend to leave his stool.

'Don't trouble yourself,' I answered with a courteous sneer. It was time to go. I was all too aware that the barber, who had been peering over my shoulder in a haze of exotic skin lotion, was starting to make a poor impression on this hard-nosed front-line legionary.

I made one last play for information. 'What's the word on the Fourteenth Gemina?'

'Bastards!' retorted the guard.

This unsophisticated parley was all I could expect. In a legionary gatehouse on a dark, wet October night, there was not much scope for light salon conversation. Behind me, two exhausted despatch-riders were waiting to register, Xanthus was looking even more indiscreet, and a very drunk venison- supplier who wanted to dispute a bill with the centurions' dining club was jostling me so closely that I left, not wanting a fight right then, yet feeling as bruised and indignant as a barmaid at a Saturnalia feast.

I booked us into a civilian lodging-house between the fort and the river, so we could make a quick departure at first light. We went to the baths but were already too late for the hot water. Dazed by the way foreign towns draw their shutters so early, we ate a grim supper, forcing it down with acidic white wine, and were then kept awake most of the night by tramping boots. I had settled us in a street full of brothels. Xanthus became intrigued, but I told him the disturbance was just troops on a night exercise.

'Listen, Xanthus. When I go up to Moguntiacum, you can stay here if you like. I'll pick you up for the trip home when I've done what I have to for the Emperor.'

'Oh no. I've come this far, I'll stick with you!'

He spoke as if he was doing me a gigantic favour. I closed my eyes wearily and made no reply.

Next morning I tried to hitch us a ride for nothing, but no luck. The trip down the Rhenus is a highly picturesque one, so the owners of the river barges were charging equally highly for the privilege of surveying a hundred miles of its scenery.

Ours was a wineship; most of them are. We shared the slowly passing vistas with two old fellows and a pedlar. The grandads had bent backs, bald heads, and a series of mouthwatering picnics which they had no intention of sharing round. They sat opposite each other for the whole journey, talking hard, like people who have known one another for a very long time.

The pedlar, who came aboard at a small settlement called Borbetomagus was bent too, but under the trappings of a fold-up stall and the ghastly stuff he sold. Xanthus and I were a captive audience so he soon =knotted the corners of his cloth bundles and spread his offerings on the deck. I ignored him. Xanthus immediately throbbed with crass excitement.

'Look at this, Falco!'

Since I did sometimes make a feeble attempt to save him from his stupidity, I glanced at the trash he was about to invest in now. Then I groaned. This time it was militaria. You may suppose our footslogging heroes would have had enough of kit and harness without spending their pay on more, but never believe it; this canny pedlar was doing a fine trade flogging the legionaries his sad souvenirs of ancient wars. I had seen it in Britain. I had seen it in the carload of junk my elder brother, who had no sense of proportion, had dragged home from the exotic souks of Caesaria. Here, with nine legions along the Rhenus, most of them bored and all of them flush with imperial silver, there must be a vast scope for trading in quaint tribal buckles, worn-out weaponry and odd jags of iron that could have come off any farm implement.

The man was a native Ubian, all top lip and small talk. The lip was stretched over big buck teeth; the chat was his softening-up technique. It worked on Xanthus. Most things did. I let the two of them get on with it.

The pedlar's name was Dubnus. He was selling the usual native helmets with spikes over the ears, several bowls of 'old' arrowheads and speartips (which he had obviously gathered up last Thursday from a rubbish tip at a previous fort), a dirty drinking-cup which he swore to Xanthus was an aurochs' horn, some links of 'Sarmatian armour', half a set of 'Icenean horse-trappings', and just by the way, a collection of Baltic amber.

None of it contained fossilised insect life, but the amber was the only stuff worth considering. Naturally Xanthus passed straight on without a second glance. I said I would have bought some beads for my girlfriend if they bad been matched and threaded properly. Not entirely to my surprise, Dubnus immediately produced from his unsavoury pocket three or four decent necklace strands – at three or four times the price.

We spent a tolerable half-hour haggling over the string with the smallest beads. I beat him down to about a quarter of the asking price just for the vocal exercise, then snapped up one of the better necklaces as I had intended all along. The pedlar had weighed me up cannily, but Xanthus looked startled. He did not know I had spent my childhood burrowing around the Saepta Julia second-hand stalls. I also thought it might be wise to buy a present for Helena's birthday in case I ran into her. I was missing her. It made me an easy mark for anyone hawking trinkets that showed slight vestiges of taste.

Judging that my purse was now firmly closed, Dubnus turned his whining charm on Xanthus again. He was an artist. As an auctioneer's son, I almost enjoyed watching it. Luckily, we were not sailing all the way down to the delta, or the barber would have bought up the pedlar's entire stock. He did fall for the aurochs' horn, supposedly hacked by Dubnus himself from one of the wild Gallic oxen whose savage temper is legendary…

'I'd really like to see one of those, Falco!'

'Just be thankful it's unlikely!'

'You ever spied one on your travels?'

'No. I'm sensible, Xanthus – I never wanted to.'

His acquisition was a fairly useful drinking-cup, which didn't spill too much down his tunic neck when he attempted to use it. He managed to polish it up to a handsome shine. I never told him that aurochs don't have twisted horns.

As the wineship floated on to our destination, Dubnus slowly rewrapped his treasures. Xanthus began to handle a helmet. Partly to rescue him before he was bankrupt (because that would mean I'd have to pay for everything), I took the item away from him.

It looked like army issue at first, but with differences. The modern helmet incorporates a deeper guard around the baok, proteoting the neck and shoulders; it also has oheekpieoes and extra protection over the ears. I suspect the revised design was developed to counter damage from Celtic broadsword swipes. The original pattern had been superseded long before my time, but I was staring at one I now.

'This must be quite an antique, Dubnus.'

'I call that a relic of the Varus disaster!' he confessed amiably, as if owning to a fake; then his eyes met mine and he had second thoughts. I managed to stop myself shivering..

'Where did you get it?'

'Oh… somewhere in the woods.' His voice faded evasively.

'When?' I asked again.

'Oh… up in the north.'

'Somewhere like the Teutoburger forest?'

He was reluctant to clarify. I dropped to one knee, surveying his stock more attentively. He had marked me up as trouble, so he didn'r like me doing it. I ignored his agitation. That worried him even more.

Now I noticed a piece of old bronze that could have oome from a Roman sword pommel; clasps that resembled a set I had seen at my grandfather's house; a holder for a helmet plume – another discontinued line, now altered to a oarrying loop.

'Sell a lot of these "Varus relics", do you?'

'People believe what they want to.'

There was also a blackened object I refused to handle because I guessed it was a human skull.

I stood up again.

Augustus's stepgrandson, the heroic Germanious, was supposed to have found where the massacre had taken place, collected the scattered remains of the dead, and given the lost army of Varus some kind of decent funeral – but who believes that out in the hostile forest Germanicus and his nervous troops spent too much time offering themselves as another target? They did their best. They brought the lost standards back to Rome. After that we oould all sleep with clear consciences. It was best not to think that somewhere deep in the dark woods of unconquered Germany broken weapons and orher booty might still lie among unburied Roman bones.

The troops of today would buy this mouldy paraphernalia. Army lads love souvenirs that smack of manly deeds in dangerous venues. The grislier the better. If Dubnus really had discovered the old battle site, he must be coining it.

I avoided the issue by probing for my own purposes. 'So you go across the river, do you? In the north?' He shrugged. Commerce breeds daring. In any case, free Germany had never been a no-go area for the purposes of trade. 'How far do your travels take you? Ever come aoross the famous prophetess?'

'Whioh prophetess would that be?'

He was teasing. I tried not to look particularly interested, in case word of my mission ran ahead of me. 'Is there more than one sinister spinster wielding influence over the tribes? I mean the bloodthirsty priestess of the Bructeri.'

'Oh, Veleda!' sneered Dubnus.

'Ever met her?'

'No one meets her.'

'Why's that?'

'She lives at the top of a high tower in a lonely plaoe in the forest. She never sees anyone.'

'Since when have prophets been so shy?' Just my luck. A really weird one. 'I never imagined she kept a marble office, with an appoinrments secretary serving peppermint tea for visitors, but how does she communicate?'

'Her male relations carry messages.' Judging by the effeot Veleda had had on international events, her uncles and brothers must have busily trampled a wide swathe through the woods. It rather took the shine off her elusiveness.

The barber was wearing his excitable look. 'Is Veleda part of your mission?' he hissed. His wide. eyed simplicity was beginning to afflict me like a stitch in the side when you're running any from a mad bull.

'Women I can handle. But I don't do Druids!' It was a line. Two of us knew it, yet poor old Xanthus looked impressed.

I had to act fast. Our barge was approaching the great bridge at Moguntiacum; we would soon berth at the quay. I gave the pedlar a thoughtful glance. 'If somebody wanted to contact Veleda, would it be possible to get a message to this tower of hers?'

'Could be.'

Dubnus looked disturbed by the suggestion. I made it plain I was speaking with some authority, and told him not to leave town.

The pedlar assumed the air of a man who would leave town exactly when he wanted to, and without telling me first.