The Singing Sword

II

When I awoke the next day, I had begun to feel more like my normal self. I drank some hot, spicy broth for breakfast, and by noon I was beginning to feel hungry. By supper time, I was ravenous and had a large piece of bread and a small piece of meat with my broth, although Luceiia felt that I might be premature in tackling solid food after having not eaten for so long during my illness. I managed to keep it down, however, and from that moment on my recovery was rapid. The pneumonia that afflicted me had no doubt run its natural course, but I felt, and told my wife so, that it was put to flight by the pleasure of being back in my own home with my loved ones. By the third day after my return home I was up, out of bed and walking for short distances. I had lost a shocking amount of weight, considering the short duration of my illness, and most of it was muscle. I was astonished to find myself as weak as a baby, and disgruntled when my physician pointed out that this was an inevitable demonstration of middle age. Luceiia fussed around me like a broody hen, of course, although I never saw a hen so beautiful, and kept close watch on me at all times, insisting that I spend most of my out-of-bed time sitting in a comfortable chair, well wrapped in blankets and close to a portable brazier containing a glowing fire made from my own charcoal, which threw out a highly gratifying amount of heat.

I was sitting thus across from Caius several days later, reading something of which I have absolutely no recollection. I know it was a book, but that is all I know because I do not think I ever read another word of it after Caius looked up and said, "Oh, I know what I forgot to tell you before you left on your last trip."

I shifted position, seeking a shred more comfort and tugging at the edge of my blanket in a futile attempt to pull some more of it loose from beneath me. It was effort wasted and I gave up in ill-tempered disgust, some of which may have crept into my tone as I said, in response to Caius's overture, "What?"

He caught the ungracious inflection and looked at me in surprise, obviously wondering what he had said to cause such a snappish reaction, while his patrician eyebrow arched so high that the skin of his forehead wrinkled above his right eye. I felt rather foolish.

"Pardon me, Cay," I said. "I did not intend to sound so ungracious. The tone of voice was not for you; it was merely frustration."

"Frustration?" The eyebrow did not descend. "Over what?"

I had to laugh, at my own childish anger and at his expression. "At this damned blanket. I'm sitting on it and I want to release some more of it from beneath me to wrap around my shoulders, but I can't pull it free and I can't stand up, because of the way Luceiia has it wrapped around me."

He was on his feet instantly, leaning towards me, hands outstretched to help me to my feet. Once I was standing, it became a relatively simple matter to shake the folds of the blanket loose and rearrange them the way I wanted them. When everything was absolutely proper and correct, we sat down again.

"So," I said, "what was it?"

"What was what?"

"What was it you forgot to tell me before I left to get the iron?"

He had lost interest in what he had been going to say and was looking at his text again, clearly desirous of resuming his study. "Oh, that." His voice reflected his waning interest. "It was nothing important, merely of passing interest. I received a letter from Marcellus Prello, a friend of mine in Gaul. Thank God there are still a few imperial mail ships getting through. Anyway, he wrote that he had been in Rome a few months earlier and had seen your old nemesis Claudius Seneca in the street. You don't know him, but Marcellus was one of the friends I asked for information on Seneca shortly after you first arrived here ... How long ago would that have been?" The question was rhetorical, because he was already computing his own answer. "Great heavens, Publius, do you know you have been living here for more than ten years?"

I nodded. "Yes, I know. I've been married to your sister for almost eleven. But your friend was mistaken."

Caius's brow creased slightly. "What do you mean?"

I shrugged. "Simply what I said. Your friend must have been mistaken. He could not have seen Claudius Seneca."

He laughed. "Don't be silly, of course he could. He was in Rome, Publius."

I shook my head again. "No. It wasn't him. It might have been a Seneca — you've told me they're a prolific crowd. But it certainly was not Claudius."

Even as I said the words I regretted them. Caius was astonished by my reaction to a very casual statement, and I realized that I had committed a tactical error. I should simply have accepted his remark and said nothing. I held only one secret from him in the world, about this very thing. Now he came after me, his curiosity fully alerted.

"You sound absolutely convinced of that, Publius. How can you be so certain?" He paused, but not for long enough to permit me to frame a response before he continued, an edge of suspicion in his voice. "Since when do you keep yourself so minutely informed of the whereabouts and activities of Claudius Seneca?"

"I don't," I said, stubbornly. "I simply happen to know your friend was wrong. He made an error in identification. That's all."

A small frown ticked between the Britannican brows. "But how can you know that, Publius? Do you know for certain that Claudius Seneca was not in Rome at the time in question?"

A loud voice in my head was screaming at me to be careful in what I said. I decided to brazen it out. "Yes," I said, regretting more than ever having responded to Caius's initial comment at all.

He almost leaped on my answer, practically hectoring me. "I see. Then where was he, Publius? And when was the time in question? When was Marcellus Prello in Rome?"

Flustered, and beginning to feel a stirring of panic at being caught in a lie, I looked away, into the depths of the brazier beside me, unwilling to let him see my thoughts reflected in my eyes. He kept after me.

"Publius? Did you hear me?"

"I heard you. You are determined to have an answer from me, aren't you? Why? Why is this so important, Cay?"

My question took him by surprise; his face registered astonishment and disbelief that I would have to ask such a question. When he answered, the tone of his voice was that of a teacher explaining something self-evident to a struggling student.

"It is important precisely because of what you said, and the fact that you said it. I know you, Publius Varrus. You are not a devious man. I also know how you used to feel about Claudius Seneca, and you have not mentioned his name in years. Now, I bring his name up casually, mentioning that someone has seen the fellow somewhere, and your denial of the mere possibility of such a thing happening is immediate and absolute. Something strikes me as being wrong here, and, as an old campaigner, I have learned to trust my instincts in such matters."

I sighed and capitulated. "Very well, Cay, I'll tell you my secret. Your friend could not have seen Claudius Seneca because Claudius Seneca is dead."

Now it was Caius's turn to stare wordlessly at me and then into the fire. He cupped his chin in one hand, kneading the flesh of his cheek reflectively with the tip of his forefinger. When he did speak his voice was almost without inflection.

"Dead, you say? I can only assume you are convinced of the truth of that. You are sure of it, are you not?"

I nodded. "Yes, sure as I can be."

"And how sure is that?"

"Completely, beyond the shadow of a doubt."

"How? Who told you? And how can you be so certain it is true?"

"No one told me, Cay. I know because I killed him."

Caius sucked in his breath, stood up, turned on his heel and walked away from me, so that his voice drifted back to me over his shoulder.

"When?"

"Five years ago, just at the time we made the alliance with Ullic and his Celts and the word arrived that Theodosius had defeated and executed Magnus Maximus."

He turned back towards me and stood looking at me from the other side of the room. "Five years ago? And you said nothing? Why? How did you kill him? And when? You have never been away from the Colony for any great length of time, and Seneca has never been close to the Colony. Such a killing would require either careful advance planning and an absence that would require some kind of explanation, or the exact opposite, a sudden and explosive confrontation. I will not even entertain the idea that you could murder him from concealment. I am sure you allowed him an honourable death, in spite of the fact that in your eyes he had forfeited all claim to honour ... But I have to ask myself how you could have managed his death without either Luceiia or myself noticing anything, and why you would have said nothing to either of us in all that time?"

I nodded, admitting the truth of what he said and acknowledging all of the commentary that he intended with his words. "After I had done it, I decided to tell no one," I said, clearing my throat in mid-sentence. "I decided the less said, the better, and I did not want to endanger you or Luceiia with knowledge of what I had done, even though — " I held up my hand, palm outward, to silence him before he could interrupt me, " — even though I was convinced that what I had done was correct and honourable and I had no thought of having done anything shameful. I had served as an instrument of justice, I believed, but I had no wish to boast of it."

"I see." Caius came back and sat down again in the chair opposite me. "You had better tell me everything that happened that day, Publius. Think carefully and leave nothing out. Assume that I know absolutely nothing of what you are going to tell me. Pretend I have never even heard of Seneca. This could be extremely important."

Impressed by his obvious sincerity and concern, I sat silent for a while, collecting my thoughts before beginning a none-too-brief narrative, telling him everything I could remember of the events leading up to and surrounding the death of Claudius Seneca. I had engineered Seneca's death myself, confronting him and killing him with savage satisfaction for his past deeds and the deaths of two of my closest friends.

I started with the original meeting — and the first fight — between myself and Seneca, almost fifteen years earlier, when I had been in the company of my good friend Plautus, then senior centurion of the garrison at Colchester, and ended with the final confrontation, in which I had forced Seneca to sign a parchment scroll admitting to his crimes and then given him a sword with which to kill me if he could. He failed. I stabbed him a mortal blow, left his confession where it could not fail to be found and departed the scene prior to the arrival of the military search party already summoned by one of my men.

As I told my long and unpleasant tale, Caius sat silently, staring into the coals. Not once did he raise his eyes to look at me. When I finished talking, the silence between us grew and stretched. The charcoal cracked and settled with a soft crunching sound and a puff of smoke and light ash. Finally he stirred and looked at me, heaving a great sigh and expelling it through pursed lips.

"And you never said a word, in all this time."

I shrugged my shoulders. "As I told you, I saw no advantage to you in knowing anything about it. I wasn't proud of it."

"I believe you, but were you satisfied with your vengeance?"

Again I gave a slight shrug. "I really don't know. I drew no pleasure from it, that much I can say with certainty."

"But you are sure you killed him."

"Of course I am! What kind of question is that? I don't kill many people. When I do, I'm usually aware of what I'm doing!"

He shook his head, a tightly controlled flick of annoyance. "I didn't mean that. What I meant was, are you sure he was dead when you left him?"

"As sure as I am that you're alive. I held the whoreson upright at arm's length, skewered on the end of my sword, and felt the life go out of him. I wanted to cut off his head — to execute him formally, I suppose — but I was too disgusted, so I just left him lying there. But he was dead, Caius."

"Mmm... And you left the signed confession right there?"

"Right there. Tucked beneath his arm."

"And you never heard about anything coming of what you had done?"

"No. Nothing."

"Did you not find that curious, or strange?"

"No, why should I? I knew what I knew. I knew what I had done, and I knew what must have happened once he was found. His family would have been informed of his disgrace and taken measures to ensure that the truth did not become widely known. They would have bought silence at whatever cost to protect themselves and their family name."

"You expected that? So you had no interest in establishing public disgrace?"

"No, none at all. What purpose would that have served? I merely wished him dead and his perfidy established and acknowledged among those who knew what was involved."

"Hmmm!" Caius rose to his feet and shook out the folds of the robe he was wearing, a draped garment cut and tailored to resemble the classical toga, but much lighter and more practical, opening down the front from neck to ankle, fastened with a series of small hooks and girdled with a belt of supple leather. He remained standing, bent forward and looking down towards his feet as he carefully readjusted the cloth and refastened the leather belt about his waist. I knew he was thinking deeply, using the activity as a mask for his deliberations. He was satisfied with his efforts, eventually, and turned towards the brazier, holding his hands out, absent-mindedly, towards the dwindling heat from the coals. I waited for him to speak, and at length he asked me a surprising question.

"Publius, do you remember our conversation on the first occasion that we met, that night in the desert in Africa?"

"Yes, I do. We spoke of many things that night."

"We did, and among them one thing that I had no wish to know of, at first. Do you recall?"

I smiled at him. "Clearly. The matter of the favour I had done for my commanding legate, the favour that earned me — how did you put it? — intercontinental and inter-legion transfer. You thought at first I had been involved in some kind of extra-legal chicanery."

"But I was wrong. You had been rewarded merely for 'straightening out' your commander's errant son. Young Seneca. What was his name?"

"The boy? Jacobus. I called him Jacob."

"Jacobus. That was my brother's name. What happened to him after you left, do you know?"

I shook my head. "I have no idea. I have not given him a thought since that night we talked of him. He was only the least of the Senecas. I presume he grew up and became a tribune; he had the makings of a fine officer, in spite of his family name. You will bear in mind that, in those days, I had no thought of Senecas as being different from anybody else."

"I remember." He heaved a deep, weary sigh. "We all learn through living."

The pause that followed was so long that I thought he had finished speaking, but just as I opened my lips to speak again, he resumed. "What would you say if I were to tell you he came to Britain?"

It was my turn to frown now, wondering what my friend was leading up to. "Jacob? I should be surprised that you would know of it and not have told me."

He answered me with a smile. "Even if I thought the knowledge might be both unwelcome to you and unnecessary?"

"How could you assume that? He and I were friends, once. But did he?"

"Yes, Publius, he did. He arrived with the army Theodosius sent to restore order after the rebellion of Magnus Maximus." There was no trace of a smile on Cay's face now. "He is now deputy commander of the garrison at Venta Belgarum — I have been keeping an eye on him, as you can see. He is a Seneca, after all. Jacobus started out here in Britain as a squadron commander at Aquae Sulis, and among his first duties was the task of responding to a mysterious summons concerning the missing Procurator of South Britain."

"What?" I felt the blood draining from my cheeks, and a roaring noise began building up in my ears. "Jacob? A Seneca found Seneca? How do you know this? And why wouldn't you tell me before now?"

He held up his hand to silence me. "I would have told you immediately, had there been any substance to the story I heard, but there was none. The details came to me in a letter from a friend in Glevum, Decius Lepido. Did you ever meet him?" I shook my head and he continued. "Well, anyway, he is now chairbound, like most ageing soldiers, near retirement and confined to administrative duties. According to Lepido, the event was a false alarm. A mysterious message came to the garrison commander at Aquae, informing him that the body of the missing Procurator, Claudius Seneca, could be found in a specific place, indicated on a hand-drawn map. A search party was sent out immediately, but all they found was the place and three bodies, one of them still alive, none of them the missing Procurator. The official report of the matter crossed Lepido's desk the following month. He told me about it in his next letter, several months after that, and the only reason he mentioned it at all was that the leader of the search party was Jacobus Seneca, the Procurator's nephew. He said it reminded him of the old saying about setting a thief to catch a thief." He paused again.

"I remember thinking at the time that you might be interested in the reappearance of your young charge from Africa, quite apart from the news of Seneca himself, but you were away on one of your journeys when the letter arrived and it was hardly a major piece of important news. By the time you came back I had forgotten about it. When I did think about it again, much later, it no longer seemed worth mentioning. You had apparently forgotten all about the Seneca clan, and I thought it better to let sleeping dogs lie. So I said nothing. I can see now I was wrong."

I had listened to the last part of his explanation without really absorbing it. My mind was filled with the import of what he had said before that: "Three bodies, one of them still alive, none of them the missing Procurator."

"But that's impossible!" My voice was choked with phlegm. Caius raised an eyebrow at me, saying nothing. I cleared my throat and began again. "You said ... your friend said, in his version of the story, that none of the three men was Seneca." Caius waited for me to continue. "But that's not true. He must have been mistaken."

Caius shook his head briefly. "No. He was quoting from the official report, Publius. Lepido would make no mistake about that. An official report is, ipso facto, the formal truth."

"There were three dead men in that clearing, Cay. None was alive." Another thought occurred to me. "What about the confession? Did he have anything to say about that?"

"What confession? The official report made no mention of any confession."

"I left it under the swine's arm!"

"I believe you. But, officially, no confession exists, or ever did."

Unable to sit still any longer, seething with baffled anger, I sprang to my feet and began pacing the room, kneading my right fist in my left. Caius turned to follow me with his eyes, saying nothing, allowing me to follow the chaotic surging of my thoughts. Finally I stopped pacing and faced him again.

"Jacob grew to be a Seneca, after all." Cay's only response was to raise his eyebrow in that old, sardonic mannerism of his, and I continued. "I thought he was different... thought he had the makings of a decent man... but he's just as warped and evil as the rest of his brood. He found the body, suppressed the confession and covered the whole thing up. But how? How could he have concealed Seneca's identity? That doesn't make sense."

Caius ran his hand over his short, iron-grey hair from crown to forehead, pressing it down onto his brow with spread fingers as he sighed again. "But it does. It does, Publius. Think about it, and remember the people with whom we are dealing. Magnus's rebellion was over. New troops everywhere, all of undoubted loyalty to Theodosius, and all from overseas. Probably not one soul in the new garrison at Aquae Sulis had ever set eyes on Claudius Seneca, so when the man's own nephew denied that this was his uncle, who would contradict him? Officially, Jacobus Seneca brought back a nameless survivor who — "

"Impossible! I've told you, Cay, there were no survivors, other than me."

He stared at me. "Then why go to all the trouble of denying the identity of the corpse?"

"What d'you mean? To protect the swine's reputation, of course."

"Against what, Publius? All Jacob had to do was destroy the written confession, and Seneca was blameless. It would then have been a tragic end to a heroic figure: the noble Procurator, murdered by his abductors after a titanic struggle in an attempt to escape. That would have ended the mystery surrounding his disappearance very neatly, from everyone's viewpoint except yours."

"Damnation, that's not good enough, Cay." I was digging my heels in, mentally, knowing I was right. "There has to be another explanation. That whoreson was dead when I walked away from him, I swear it."

Caius shook his head slowly, unwilling to accede the point. "Then what other possible explanation could there be, Publius?"

I slammed my clenched fist into my palm. "I don't know, I don't know. But there has to be something, something devious and serpentine and reptilian. Something that would occur only to a damned Seneca, and we're missing it!"

Caius arrived at a decision. I saw it happen in his eyes, and then he snapped his head downward in a short, decisive nod.

"Very well, I'll grant that you may be correct, on the reptilian grounds alone. And we are not exactly devoid of resources in this. The truth is verifiable, although not immediately. I shall write to my friend Marcellus Prello again tonight and ask him to be more specific regarding this alleged sighting of Claudius Seneca in Rome. It may take a month or more to hear whether or not he has anything to add to his original report, but at least we'll know then, with some degree of certainty, if Prello spoke with conviction in his last letter, or if he was merely gossiping."

I felt better already. "Fine. So be it! But he's dead, Cay, and your friend Prello made an error of identification. I would wager on that. I don't know what motivated Jacob Seneca to do what he did in concealing the death of his unspeakable uncle, but I do know he did it. Claudius Seneca, may he be cursed anew by the ancient God of the Hebrews, is dead and burning in a firepit in Hades."

There was nothing more to be said at that time, I felt, but in spite of my surge of confidence, my peace of mind had been shattered for that day, and I ended up sleeping most of the afternoon away, lulled by a draught concocted for me by Caius's physician.

Within a matter of a few more days, however, a series of events was to occur that would drive all memory and all consciousness of Claudius Seneca from my mind.