The Iron Hand of Mars

LXIII

Augusta Treverorum, capital of Belgica.

It had been founded by Augustus, who had taken an empty site at a strategic crossroads on the River Mosella and begun with a bridge, like any sensible man. His bridge was a decent affair, with seven pillars of ashlar set on piles. The whole structure was built on a massive scale because the river is changeable there. The town had been planned neatly. There were new vineyards struggling to establish themselves, as well as cereal crops, but the local economy thrived on two staples: ceramics and wool. The sheep supplied official mills that wove cloth for army uniforms, and the redware pots also went under contract to the legions. As a result, I was not surprised to find that the fat cats of Augusta Treverorum had managed to provide themselves with some of the largest and best-appointed villas I had seen since leaving Italy. This was a town that would attract the attentions of anyone who had learned to appreciate Roman life in its most civilised aspects (wealth and show). Someone like a high-ranking, Romanised Batavian, say.

The Temple of Mars Lenus honoured both our own. god and his Celtic equivalent, Tim. This was not Mars the warrior, but Mars the healer – a natural corollary, since the god of soldiers needs to mend their wounds also if he wants to bump them back into the battleline as soon as possible. Mars the god of youth (young spear fodder) was also represented.

The temple was the centre of a flourishing shrine for the sick. There was a high quota of slack taverns and sour- smelling rooms for hire, plus booths and bothies where sellers of trinkets and trifles were also grimly trying to get rich quick before their custom literally died. It had the usual depressing hangers-on selling votive models of every anatomical part from sexual organs (both sexes) to feet (left or right) and ears (indeterminate), plus the whole grasping range of apothecaries, quack dentists and doctors, dieticians, fortune-tellers and money-changers. These characters all flocked to the shrine, feeding on hope and despair in equal measure while they raked in their usual sharp percentages. Occasionally I did spot somebody who was actually lame or ill, but they were encouraged to keep out of sight. Pale, sad faces are bad for trade.

Like all these places the turnover in shady entrepreneurs must be fast. People could come and go without much explanation. Few questions would be asked by those who preferred to remain unobtrusive themselves in case an official came round asking questions about licences. A man who wanted to hide could live among this shanty town more or less openly.

I never saw his son, the child with the arrows. It was just as well. I was intending to give him a thrashing, for not shooting straighter at my niece.

I found Julius Civilis looking like a man on his uppers, sitting on a stool at a shack outside town, whittling uneasily. He was keeping an eye out for trouble but he only had one eye to look out with. My informants had been efficient: I knew which dusty track he lived down, and I had a personal description. I circled round in the local fields and silently approached him on his blind side.

'The game's up, Civilis!'

He spun round and saw me standing there. I took my sword out slowly and laid it on the ground between us. It served to establish a truce for us to talk. He must have guessed I still had my knife, and since Civilis had been a cavalry commander I had no doubt he was hung about with daggers for cutting stones out of hooves – or carving notches on imperial agents' ribs. To catch me out he would have to be first into action, and quick with it; he looked too dispirited to try.

He was older than me. Taller and much more solid. Probably even more depressed than I was. He wore leather trousers to just below the knee and a cloak trimmed with strands of raddled fur. He was heavily scarred and moved stiffly, like a man who had fallen from a horse once too often. His missing eye looked as if it had been taken out by something like an artillery bolt, leaving a deep twisted seam. His good eye was sharply intelligent. He had a beard down to his cloak-brooch and long strands of wavy hair; both were red. Not the bold red I had been promising myself; but a sadder, more faded colour that seemed to mirror what was left of the rebel's life. That too was showing grey at the roots.

He let me introduce myself. 'So this is what it feels like meeting a footnote to history!'

'Less of the footnotes!' he growled. I found myself liking him. 'What do you want?'

'Just passing through. I thought I'd look you up. Don't be surprised. A child could find you here. In fact a child did – a mere eight-year-old, and not very bright, though she had help from a much cleverer Ubian. Worried?' I asked gently. 'You know what it means. If a child can find you, so can any smouldering legionary whose mate you killed at Vetera. Or any disgruntled Batavian, come to that.'

Julius Civilis told me what he would like me to do with myself; it was wittily devised and succinctly phrased. 'You say that in much the same terms as the famous Fourteenth Gemina, who also think I stink. Must be the Roman influence. Do you miss all that?'

'No,' he said, but jealously. 'The Fourteenth? Those braggarts!' He himself had commanded an auxiliary detachment in Germany before he had tried for glory; he would have heard about their parent legion from his kinsmen in the eight famous Batavian cohorts who deserted. 'I suppose we have to talk. Do you want the story of my life?'

He had the right background; this interview would be businesslike. I could have been dealing with one of our own. Well, I was really. 'Sorry.' I hoped he could hear that my regret was genuine. I would have given a lot to hear the full story from the rebel's own lips. 'I'm due in Moguntiacum for the Emperor's birthday parade. I've no time to listen to the drivel about twenty years in the Roman camps, then your only reward being Imperial suspicion and the threat of execution… Let's get down to it, Civilis. You took the money. You enjoyed the life. You were grateful to be exempt from taxation and gain the benefits of a regular income and a structured career. If things had been different, you would have taken your discharge diploma and retired as a Roman citizen. Right up to the moment when Vespasian became Emperor you could have basked in his friendship and been a great force locally. You threw it away for a dream that became pointless. Now you're stateless and hopeless too.'

'That's pretty bilge! Have you finished?' His single eye regarded me with more good judgement than I liked.

'No, but you have. Events have passed you by, Civilis. I see here an exhausted man. You're saddled with a large family; so am I. Now that your stand against fate is in tatters I can guess how you must be being nagged. You're suffering earache as well as backache and heartache. You're sick of trouble and tired of the campaign – '

'I'd do it again.'

'Oh I don't doubt that. In your shoes, so would I. You saw a chance, and made the most of it. But the chance is over. Even Veleda accepts that.'

'Veleda?' He looked suspicious.

I said smoothly, 'Imperial agents have just interviewed the lady in her signal-tower. Incidentally, my own view is we ought to charge her rent for that… She concedes the peace, Civilis.'

We both knew the Batavian's independence movement was nothing without support from Free Germany and Gaul. Gaul had long been a lost cause for rebellion: too comfort-loving by half. Now Germany was opting out too.

'So much for freedom!' murmured the red-haired man.

'Freedom to run wild, you mean? Sorry. I sound like every father there ever was berating a child who wants to stay out late in unsuitable company.'

'You can't help that. Rome,' he replied drily, 'is a paternalist society.' It felt strange to be addressed in refined, lightly satirical Latin by a man who looked as if he had spent a month huddled up against a gorse-bush on an open moor.

'Not always,' I confessed. 'My father ran away from home and left the women to get on with it.'

'You should have been a Celt.'

'Then I'd be fighting with you.'

'Thanks,' he said. 'Thanks for that, Falco. So it's parole again?' He was referring to the times other emperors had pardoned him. I hoped he realised this emperor was here to stay. 'What am I required to do?'

'You and your family will live in Augusta Treverorum at a fixed address. Protection will be arranged at first, though I reckon you should soon be assimilated into the local community.' I grinned. 'I don't feel Vespasian will want to offer you a new legionary command!' He was too old to care. 'Apart from that, here comes somebody whom I asked to meet us specially…'

A familiar figure had approached, incongruous among the run-down hovels where Civilis had lain up. He had a haircut that shrieked quality, and unacceptable shrimp-pink shoes. Undeterred by his own dramatic turnout, he scrutinised Civilis with visible pity.

'Falco! Your friend has a florid crop of foliage disfiguring his pediment!'

I sighed. 'This character has developed a putrid line of rhetoric since he met me. Julius Civilis, prince of Batavia, may I introduce to you Xanthus, one-time barber to emperors – and the best barber on the Palatine at that. He has shaved Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and probably Titus Caesar, though he never reveals the names of current clients. He has something in common with Celts, I think; he collects celebrity heads. Xanthus,' I announced gently to the rebel chief with the ghastly locks, 'has come to Augusta Treverorum all the way from Rome in order to give you a snappy trim and shave.'