Enemies of the Empire (34 page)

There was a little silence before Marcus said, ‘Well, it’s over now.’

Nyros looked at him. ‘I know. We expect no mercy from our conquerors.’

‘You will be given none.’

Nyros was still kneeling at his feet. ‘There is one favour, though, that I would ask of you. You are a fair man, I believe, and not wholly ignorant of Celtic ways. You have a close companion of our race. I ask you, then, before you take us off to meet our fate, to permit us to make a final sacrifice, a tribute to our great ancestor in whose service and memory we fought. A ritual feast of sacred venison to venerate the gods – we prepared some in your honour a day or two ago, so it will not take long – and with the remnants of the cooking-fire we’ll set light to the huts so that they cannot be desecrated when we’ve gone. That is the only boon we ask.’

Marcus looked doubtfully at me.

‘Why not?’ I said. ‘It seems not much to ask, and in a little while the soldiers of the rearguard will arrive and they can help us to march our prisoners back to town.’

Marcus nodded briefly. ‘Very well.’

‘Then, in my way, I bless you,’ Nyros said. He rose to his feet and clapped his hands. ‘The venison,’ he said, in Celtic, to the tribe. He turned to Marcus. ‘Some of the women will have to be released to heat and serve it to us.’

Marcus gave the word. ‘But not the men,’ he said. He saw that I was ready to protest. ‘They do not need to free their hands to eat. I do not trust these rebels. I would not be surprised if they still tried some other trick.’

He watched suspiciously as the bowls were brought, and the great pot was carried to the fire. However, all was reverence as the women worked. They stirred the pot in silence till slowly the warm smell of stew came floating through the hut and they poured a little of the liquid on the flames. Nyros muttered an incantation and a prayer. Only then did they take ladles and begin to serve it out. The men first, beginning with the old man himself – lifting the liquid in ladles to their lips, and allowing them to drink. Then the children and the women took their turn.

‘Would you care to join us? After all, we prepared the stew for you.’ It was only as Nyros turned his head that I remembered the old stories. I saw the touch of foam upon his lips. ‘Caractacus!’ he cried triumphantly, and I knew what they had done. I saw his eyes film and he slumped sideways to the floor.

It was not a wholly painless passing, even then, but only Subulcus made any murmur as he died. ‘I hope somebody takes care of the pigs,’ he whispered, and then he, too, was gone.

They had escaped our justice and preferred their own, and I was glad they had. They were both brave and foolish, but the future was not theirs.

It was several days later – the moon was full again – and we were in Isca, following a feast: Marcus, myself, my wife and Junio. We had gone back to Venta following the raid, of course, to report our success and round up the armourer, and the fuller-dyer too – Lyra had admitted that he too was a relative. I wondered who would clean the togas now.

We had made our long-delayed journey here the day after. No need for elaborate escorts now – just the usual outriders to protect against thieves – and we were given the freedom of the fort. The commander of the garrison was an important man, the head of all the forces in this area, and for days had made an enormous fuss of us – games in our honour, races and parades. Even the myrmillo was in action with his partner once again – and I had to agree with what Big-ears had said to Cupidus. It was patently a fix.

Marcus was guest of honour in all this, naturally, but I had been treated like an emperor as well. Even Gwellia was a beneficiary. Someone had mentioned to the commander that I’d been looking for a silver dress-clasp for my wife, and she had been given the finest one that I had ever seen, together with a bracelet and a fine comb for her hair.

She and I walked back together in the moonlight from the banquet hall. It had been a military affair, but it was our last evening in the fort, so Gwellia had for once accompanied me. She had been entertained most other evenings by the auxiliary commander’s lady, who had a pleasant home and kitchen slaves famous for their food. This lady was not, of course, the commander’s wife – like the optio he was not permitted one – but his consort from the vicus, the town of camp-followers and craftsmen which had grown up nearby. She was a wealthy woman, of some delicacy and taste, and they had several children. The centurion hoped to marry her when he retired, and make proper Roman citizens of them all.

Gwellia had become fond of her, and of the children in particular, and tonight she was in slightly wistful mood.

‘I can’t help feeling sorry for the optio,’ she said, as we paused in the moonlight to look out at the view through one of the loopholes in the wall. The woods and fields were white and silent, the military road an empty stretch of greyness in the dark. It was hard to imagine any threat. ‘If he’d chosen a different woman, or had been posted to a different garrison, he could have had a family just like that.’

I reached out for her hand. ‘He was lucky only to be dismissed and sentenced to the mines. He could have been executed for the secrets he betrayed.’ I knew what she was really thinking, though. It had been a sadness to me too, that now we were reunited it was too late to have a family of our own.

Her next words proved me right. ‘I’d like to send a present for those children, when we get home again,’ she said. ‘A wooden toy perhaps. Could you devise one? Or a cup and ball, like the one the butcher’s children had?’

The memory of the two boys saddened me, though they had drunk their poison defiantly enough. ‘Or course we can,’ I said. ‘We can certainly afford it now. The money I have earned from this will more than compensate for the loss of the commission for that memorial pavement.’ For my part in uncovering a conspiracy against the state I could expect a share of Nyros’s estate, which would be forfeit to the Emperor and sold. And Plautus’s as well, perhaps, if his widow’s family could not plead her cause eloquently enough, and prove that the property had already been given to her sons, and was therefore not subject to seizure by the state.

She nodded, and we spoke no more of it until much later when we had retired for the night. We were lying side by side on the finest bed the fort could boast, with soft pillows underneath our heads and fine woven blankets over us, while Junio slept on a mattress at our feet. Many patricians cannot boast such comforts.

I was luxuriating in all this when suddenly I felt a little sob go through my wife. I turned to her, surprised. ‘What is it, Gwellia?’

A pause. Then, ‘Only that I longed to have a family of our own.’

I leaned up on one elbow and tried to see her face in the light of the small oil light by the bed. ‘I understand,’ I whispered. ‘I wish the same myself.’

She turned her head away from me and said, in a small voice, ‘You know, there might have been a child.’

‘Of course there might.’ I sought to comfort her. ‘If you and I had not been torn apart . . .’

She turned her face to me and I could see the tears. ‘Better, perhaps, that things are as they are. When I think of what might have happened to a child, if it had been taken into slavery as well . . . But now I grieve that we have lost our chance. Of course, we are too old, in any case, but still, it would have been nice to have an heir. And now we never shall.’

I twined her fingers into mine, and gently voiced a thought I’d had before. ‘Unless we were to adopt one, possibly?’

I saw her glance at Junio’s sleeping form, and the ghost of a dawning smile lit up her face. ‘Perhaps,’ she murmured. She raised my fingers to her lips. ‘We’ll speak of this again.’ But the shadow had departed and she snuggled close to me. ‘In the meantime, husband,’ she kissed my hand again, ‘we may be far too old to make an heir, but surely we are not too old to try?’

I laughed softly, blew out the light and took her in my arms.