Roma Mater Read online

  Gaius’s feet jarred to rest. Emptiness grew from his heart until it engulfed him. ‘Not that,’ he whispered.

  Marcus stopped likewise and squeezed his shoulder. ‘Well, well, don’t take it overly hard. I’ve learned to live with it. We’ve stayed on speaking terms, he and I. It was his mother’s religion, and is that of his sisters and their husbands and … Maximus, who cast back the wild men … I can’t blame him greatly. If he’d waited till I died, he’d have been trapped in the curial class himself. Taking Christian holy orders now is his way out of it.’

  Out! thought Gaius. The army was another way, and he had chosen it, although that would not have been allowed if he were the older boy. Since Diocletianus, a son and heir must follow in his father’s occupation. The law was frequently evaded, but the curials – the landowners, merchants, producers, the moderately well-off – were usually too noticeable. Once it had been an honour to belong to their class. They were the councillors and magistrates; they did not endow the grandiose spectacles that Caesars and senators and ambitious newly rich did, but they underwrote the useful public works. That had been long ago. The burdens remained; the means were gone.

  ‘I hoped to be free of it myself, you know,’ Marcus was saying. ‘That’s why I went into sea traffic. High profits for men who didn’t mind the risk. Your grandfather approved – and he was a man of duty if ever there was one – and got me started. But at last … well, you know. It had taken all my father’s influence, and a stiff bribe, to get permission for me to become a navicularius when I wasn’t the son of one. Then your uncle, my older brother, died, and the guild was only too happy to “regularize” my status. That laid this estate on me. It’s devoured everything I had.’

  ‘I do know. But I’ve never quite understood how.’

  ‘I didn’t explain because I didn’t want to whine at you, who were young and had neither gift nor wish for this kind of thing. I did have my good, quiet Lucius, who was supposed to inherit anyway. It’s the taxes and assessments. You’d think, as debased as the money is, coin wouldn’t be hard to find. But that’s not so, we’re more and more going over to barter, and meanwhile the Imperium wants its cash. The taxes in kind, they get higher all the time too, as the number of farmers shrinks. In my seafaring days I was a sharp bargainer, you may recall; but I don’t have Commius’s talent for grinding wealth out of the poor underneath me.’

  Abruptly Marcus lifted his head, glanced at Gaius through crow’s-footed eyes, and laughed. He might almost have been standing at the prow of his ship as a gale blew up. ‘At ease, boy, at ease!’ he said. ‘You’re safe. The law will scarcely haul a battle-proven officer back to the farm, especially when you’re known to none less than Duke Maximus. He’ll probably get you senatorial rank. As for this place, why, if my plan pays off, I should have a chance of joining forces with my sons-in-law after they inherit. Between us, we might yet put together a villa that will last.’

  ‘But if you fail to?’ Gaius breathed.

  ‘I won’t consider that till it’s upon me, which the God forbid. At worst, I’ll never do what too many broken curials have, slunk off under changed names and become underlings, even serfs. No, your old man will die a Gratillonius.’

  ‘I would help you if I could. I hope you know that, father. But … I’m bound afar, and what will happen to me I cannot foresee.’

  ‘Let’s go on,’ said Marcus. A while of walking passed until he remarked, ‘You’ve told me nothing but that you’re off to Gallia on a special mission for the Duke. Crossing the Channel before equinox – Did he give you the funds you’ll need to persuade a skipper to take you?’

  Gaius smiled. ‘Better than that. A writ letting me commandeer a naval transport. And I mean to cross by the shortest way, from Dubris to Gesoriacum, where one can scarcely get lost in anything less than an oatmeal fog. Cutting out that hazard makes the added overland travel worthwhile.’

  ‘Then your march will take you through Londinium,’ said Marcus, also trying to lighten the mood. ‘Give the fleshpots a workout for me.’

  Gaius shook his head. ‘We won’t stop after today, except for sleep. We’ve this breadth of Britannia to cross, and then it’s more than four hundred miles over Gallia, and … the task is urgent.’

  Marcus squinted into the wind. Some distance off, Gaius’s legionaries had pitched their tents in a vacated field. That was all they had done, being too few for the labour of constructing a standard camp, but they had done it properly. The leather was drawn so taut over poles and guys that the air got no purchase on it but must be content with flapping a banner.

  Metal gleamed on statue-like sentries. Men detailed to camp chores were in plain tunic and trousers, but neat. The rest were outside in full battle dress, drilling. When they hurled their javelins, it called to mind a flight of bright birds. Tethered pack horses stood placidly, used to the sight, but the centurion’s mount and remount, more spirited, stirred as if impatient for action.

  Tour tents,’ Marcus counted. Thirty-two men, eh? Not much.’

  ‘I chose them carefully, the best I have who aren’t bound to wives. Most are Britons; we’ll understand each other’s thinking. I didn’t order them to follow me but offered them the privilege of volunteering. They’re eager. Over-eager, maybe, but I think the march will shake them down into a crack unit.’

  ‘Still, I can hear in your voice you’d have preferred a larger force.’

  ‘Maximus sent direct word to my commandant that I was to have no more than this. He … can’t spare many.’

  ‘So I’ve been suspecting … But he obviously doesn’t expect you’ll meet serious opposition.’

  ‘No. Yonder fellows will be my bodyguards and, um, the presence of Rome. That should suffice.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Father, I’m not supposed to tell –’

  ‘Four hundred-odd miles of Gallia. Not south, because that’s where the main action will be. Also, your experience has been with Armorica, as Maximus must know. Westbound, you’ll fetch up at Gesocribate, or else fairly close. But Gesocribate already has an ample Roman presence. And I don’t think the Duke of the Armorican Tract would welcome troops dispatched by the Duke of the Britains – certainly not before he knows which way the cat is going to jump. Therefore he’s doubtless not been informed, nor is he meant to get the news until too late for him to do anything about it.’ Marcus nodded. ‘M-hm. Your task is to secure a critical area and thus help assure that Armorica will stay safe – for Maximus.’

  Gaius’s bark of laughter flushed a hare from a briar patch. It lolloped off as if a fox were at its tail. ‘Father, you’re too shrewd!’

  ‘I told you I get word from outside.’ Marcus Weakened. Tor some time, now, I’ve caught the smell of war on the wind, stronger and stronger. Civil war. Maximus will get the Britannic legions to hail him Augustus. The Sixth may be doing it in Eboracum at this very hour. He’ll cross to Gallia and try for the throne.’

  ‘Wait, wait! He didn’t say that to me. He said only that affairs of state are approaching a crisis and Rome will need a loyal man in Armorica.’

  ‘Loyal to him. You’re not stupid. You know what he meant.’

  ‘He is … a valiant leader, father. And intelligent and just. Rome perishes for want of right governance.’

  ‘Those sound like words you got from him,’ Marcus said, low in his throat. ‘Oh, we could do worse. Provided the struggle doesn’t wreak the kind of harm the last such did, or give the Northfolk their chance to invade.’

  Gaius recalled Parnesius. ‘The Wall will abide, I swear.’

  ‘Scoti sail past it. Saxon galleys sweep in from the eastern sea.’

  ‘Against them – Rome will have new help.’

  Once more they halted. Marcus’s gaze probed like a sapper’s spade. ‘That’s your task,’ he said finally.

  Gaius swallowed hard and nodded.

  ‘I believe I know where. I’d liefest hear it from your lips, son. Mithras be witness that I’ll keep the se
cret.’

  Gaius thrust the name forth. ‘Ys.’

  Marcus drew a sign before him, the Cross of Light that marked the shield of his warrior God. That’s an uncanny place,’ he said.

  Gaius mustered courage. ‘It’s been left alone so long that all sorts of wild stories about it have sprung up. What do we know for certain? What do you know, father?’

  Wind roared and whistled. Clouds were appearing over the horizon. Their shadows raced across winter-grey hills and the few springtime-wet croplands. A solitary willow nearby lashed its withes around. At their removes, the manor house and the soldiers’ camp looked very small. The hawk wheeled scornful overhead.

  Lines deepened in Marcus’s brow and beside his mouth. ‘I was never there myself,’ he said. ‘I did speak with Britannic and Gallic captains who’d called. But they were just three or four, and none had done it more than once. The Ysans don’t seem to want any trade with the outside that they don’t carry on for themselves. No more involvement of any kind with Rome that they can avoid. Not that they act hostile. My talkmates said the city is still more wonderful than they’d heard, Ys of the hundred towers. But even in the joyhouses there was always … an otherness.’

  ‘It’s a foederate of ours,’ Gaius reminded.

  ‘After a fashion. And only in name for – what? These past two hundred years? When did the last Roman prefect leave?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ Gratillonius straightened. ‘But I will be the next.’

  ‘Keeping Ys neutral, at least, and a counterweight to people elsewhere in Armorica who might otherwise side with Gratianus and Valentinianus against Maximus.’

  Gaius responded louder:

  ‘And, I hope, taking a more active part than hitherto in measures against pirates. Ysan commerce has shrunk with Rome’s. From what little I recall or could find out these past months, Ys trades mainly with its Osismiic neighbours, overland; but once it was the queen of the Northern seas. I should think it’d welcome guidance in rebuilding security and commerce. Father, I don’t see how any living city can be the kind of witch-nest those rumours tell of. Give me a few years, and I’ll prove as much to the world.’

  Marcus Valerius Gratillonius smiled, more in pride than in pleasure. ‘Good for you, son. Sink or sail, you’re a Roman!’

  And how many such are left? he did not ask. Men who have hardly a drop of blood in them from Mother Rome, and who will never see her whom they serve. Can she hold their faith, today when new Gods beckon?

  IV

  1

  It was good to be on salt water again Gratillonius braced himself at the taffrail of the transport, near a swan’s-head figure that decorated the after section, and looked happily about. Forward of him was the deckhouse, on top of which two men strained to hold their steering oars against seas running heavy. It hid from Gratillonius the main deck, with lifeboat, cargo hatch, crewmen, and his soldiers. The mast rose over it. Square mainsail and triangular topsail bellied against swift grey clouds and malachite waves. Gratillonius could also glimpse the spar that jutted out over the prow and the artemon sail it bore.

  No other craft was in sight. Their whiteness dulled by spindrift, the cliffs of Britannia were sinking under the horizon, though he could still make out the pharos that loomed over Dubris. Ahead, hillscape was shouldering out of Gallia, likewise vague and distance-dimmed.

  The ship rolled and bounded like a live creature. Waters rushed, boomed, clashed. The wind skirled and flung briny spatters across his lips. Timbers and rigging creaked. Gratillonius’s muscles rejoiced in the interplay that kept him erect. Tomorrow he’d be on the road again, and that was good too, because he’d fare through country new to him until he reached magical Ys. But Mithras be thanked that first he got this brief voyage.

  He laughed aloud at himself. Had the Gods really carved out a strait at the Creation in order that Gaius Valerius Gratillonius could have a day’s worth of feeling like the boy he once was?

  The captain strode around the deckhouse. His blue uniform was hidden beneath a cloak he hugged to him in the cold. Approaching, he said through the noise: ‘Come forward with me, Centurion. A fight’s brewing between your men and mine.’

  ‘What? How?’

  ‘Several of yours are miserably seasick, and when one of them puked on the deck, the sailors didn’t want to clean it up. Then they started mocking those landlubbers.’

  Gratillonius bridled. ‘What kind of discipline do you have in the fleet?’

  The captain sighed. ‘They resent being forced out this early-in the year, in this tricky weather. I do myself, frankly, but I realize you have your orders, whatever they are. Now do come along. It’ll work better if we both take charge.’

  Gratillonius agreed and accompanied the other. On the broad expanse around the mast, men stood at confrontation. They were not all there were in their units. Some deckhands would have been flogged if they left their duty stations – though they too gibed and made obscene gestures. Half the legionaries huddled shivering, turned helpless by nausea. The rest had reflexively formed a double rank; their weapons were stowed but their fists were cocked. The sailors bunched loosely, about an equal number. They were not professional fighters. The garrison commander had ruled that the danger of Saxons was so slight at this season that he wouldn’t subject any of his too few soldiers to the real hazard of the crossing. However, each crewman bore a knife, and fingers had strayed to hilts.

  Quintus Junius Eppillus stood before his troops, growling at a sailor who appeared to be a leader. Eppillus was a stocky, paunchy man in his forties, big-nosed, bald on top, a Dobunnian with considerable Italian in his bloodlines, Gratillonius’s appointed deputy. His Latin came hoarse: ‘Watch your tongue, duckfoot. The bunch o’ you watch your tongues. You’re close to insulting not just us, but the Augusta.’

  The sailor, a tall redhead, leered and answered with a thick Regnensic accent: ‘I wouldn’t do that. I only wonder why your legion allows fat swine like you in it. Well, maybe they’ve got tired of sheep, and pleasure themselves now with swine.’

  Take that back before I remove some o’ those rotten teeth from your turnip hatch.’

  ‘Very well, I’ll take it back. You’re not swine. It’s just your fathers that were. Your mothers were whores.’

  Cynan, who was young and of the still half-wild Demetae, yelled a battle cry. He broke from the army rank and threw himself on the sailor. They went down together, to struggle for possession of the knife and each other’s throats.

  ‘Stop!’ Gratillonius roared. ‘Eppillus, break that up! Nobody else move!’

  The legionaries who were standing froze. The captain grabbed a belaying pin and bloodied a head or two among his tars. They retreated in confusion, babbling excuses and pleas for mercy. Eppillus gave the combatants a couple of efficient kicks. They separated and crawled to their feet, gasping, spitting, and shuddering.

  ‘Attention!’ Gratillonius barked. He lifted his vinestaff of authority, which seldom left him. ‘Captain, I want that man of yours whipped.’

  ‘Five lashes,’ the skipper agreed. ‘The rest of you bless whatever saints you know about. Hop to it!’ The redhead was immediately seized. He didn’t resist, doubtless realizing he was lucky to escape with nothing worse. The captain turned to Gratillonius. ‘We’ll make the same example of your fellow, eh?’

  The centurion shook his head. ‘No. He must be in shape to march. But we can’t have this kind of conduct, true. Keep still, Cynan.’ The vinestaff cut a crimson line over the youth’s cheek. ‘Go to the horses and stay there till we land. The rest of you who were involved, except the deputy, hold out your right arms.’ He gave each wrist a blow that raised a welt but would not be disabling. Eppillus possibly deserved punishment too, but not enough to make it worthwhile compromising his dignity.

  Fingers plucked at Gratillonius’s ankle. He glanced down and saw that his follower Budic had crawled to him. The youngster’s ash-pale hair fluttered around eyes hollowed by misery. He lifted a hand.
‘Here, sir,’ he mumbled.

  ‘What?’ asked Gratillonius.

  ‘Strike me, sir.’

  ‘Why, you didn’t do anything.’ Gratillonius smiled. ‘You were too upchucking sick.’

  The blue gaze adored him. ‘But … I might have … when that … that sailor said what he did … about our legion. And surely I failed my centurion, me, useless when he needed his men. Please, sir. Make it right.’

  Gratillonius quelled an impulse to rumple those locks, as if this were one of his small nephews. ‘It is already right, soldier. Just remember and learn.’ He paused. ‘Oh, and be sure you shave before we march tomorrow. I want this outfit smart.’

  Adminius snickered at his comrade’s discomfiture. ‘Spruce,’ he said, ‘not peach-fuzzy. I’ll guide yer ‘and if it’s been so long you’ve forgotten ‘ow.’ He was from Londinium, given to teasing country boys like the Coritanian Budic.

  Stripped and triced to the stays, the deckhand choked off screams as the lead-weighted cords of the whip reddened his back. Cynan slunk down the hatch. Gratillonius gave the captain a discreet grin and muttered, ‘Fresh air’s the best medicine against seasickness. He’ll be where it’s warm and stale.’

  ‘You’re sharper than you look to be,’ the captain said. ‘Uh, best we absent ourselves for a while, you and I.’

  ‘Right. Let them regain control on their own. It takes hold firmer, that way.’

  The commanders sought the captain’s room within the cabin. There he lifted a flagon from its rack and offered wine, thin sour stuff that didn’t call for watering. ‘Military honour isn’t high in the fleet,’ he admitted, ‘and it drops year by year. I can’t blame the men too much. Time was, you may know, when Rome had a navy in these parts. Now there’s just some tubs like this one, that the Saxon galleys can sail or row rings around. They land anywhere they will, the heathen do, and when next we pass by, all we find is ashes and corpses. That wears the spirit away, I can tell you. How do the inland legionaries feel?’