Swords Around the Throne (16 page)

He had seen the
nobilissima femina
Valeria Maxima Fausta several times, at public ceremonies. Sometimes too she passed, hedged about with slaves and eunuchs, through the halls of the palace in her stiffly embroidered
tunica
and mantle, wearing half a city's ransom in gemstones and pearls. She was very young, and her face still had the rounded softness of childhood, but her eyes were large and dark and her mouth plumply petulant. She had come from Rome with her father about eighteen months before, bringing a train of noble Roman ladies to form her household, and gave the strong impression that she disliked Treveris greatly, and everywhere north of the Alps too. Castus felt for her – as the daughter of one emperor, wife of a second and sister of a third, the girl surely had little say in the direction of her life. He had overheard some of the senior men of the court laughing sourly about her – the ‘gilded piglet', they called her – and had pretended not to hear.

The corridor made a sharp turn, then the eunuch led Castus out into a courtyard surrounded by colonnades and set with flowering bushes in large painted urns. There he stepped aside, and made a sweeping gesture towards Castus, like a merchant showing off his latest wares.

‘Oh, yes,' a woman said. ‘He'll do very well.'

Castus stood still, rocking back on his heels, and hooked his thumbs into his belt as he took in the scene. For a moment it seemed there were flowers everywhere. Then it seemed there were women everywhere. The flowers were heaped in profusion on the tiled floor, and strung between the pillars of the colonnades. There were three couches set in the shade, and on each a woman reclined; the other figures around them were slaves, plainly dressed.

‘Bring him over here, Serapion,' one of the reclining women said. Her round face was heavily whitened, and she wore a tunica and gown of rose-pink. All three women wore their hair elaborately curled and waved, the waves gathering into glistening plaits coiled above the nape of the neck: the imperial style. They were ladies of Fausta's household, Castus realised.

‘Step forward, please, into the light,' the eunuch Serapion told him.

‘What is this?' Castus growled at him from the corner of his mouth.

‘It will only take a moment, dominus... The dominae wish to, ah... compare their wreaths...'

‘They wish
what
...?'

‘The eunuch hasn't told him!' the second woman declared, laughing. She was slim, small-featured and languid, dressed in a patterned green
stola
. Leaning back on the couch, she lifted her wine cup for a slave to refill it. ‘We're making flower wreaths to present to our emperor Constantine Augustus at the Floralia,' she said, addressing a point just above Castus's head. ‘We need to know which looks best on a man, that's all.'

‘Wreaths,' Castus said. He winged his shoulder slightly.

The eunuch leaned close. ‘If I might hazard a comment, dominus,' he said, ‘you do somewhat resemble our Sacred Augustus. More heavily built, of course, and facially... well. But I think you too are from Illyricum, yes?'

‘Pannonia,' Castus said, speaking only to the eunuch. ‘But this is none of my concern. You could use a slave...'

‘A slave!' Serapion exclaimed. ‘Surely not – to have a slave stand in for our emperor would be close to sacrilege... But, ah—' he lowered his voice, leaning closer still ‘—please, just humour the noble dominae. It will take but a moment, and would, ah... greatly help matters here...'

Already the maids were bringing the first floral wreath, the ladies on the couches sitting up to admire the effect. Castus stood straight, his jaw tightening and heat flushing his face and neck. The humiliation twisted his gut, and he was on the verge of turning and marching back the way he had come. But these were ladies of the imperial household, intimates of the emperor's wife – was he somehow required to obey their bizarre commands? Was this part of his duty, to be exhibited like this, made fun of like this? Even the slave maids were trying not to smile.

‘No, no, not that one, Plautiana. He looks like a garlanded ox being led to the sacrificial altar! Try the one with the roses and marigolds...'

Castus had little experience of the ways of aristocrats; those few that served with the army did not associate with the common soldiers or centurions. He had seen them from a distance, in the retinues of the emperors on campaign, but their ways were alien to him and he felt no great connection to them.

Neither had he very much experience of the ways of women. His mother had died when he was born, and his father had only the harshest of things to say about her. But since childhood Castus had associated women with kindness; his father would often beat him so hard that he could barely stand, and throw him out of the house for some supposed failing, and it was always the women of the neighbourhood who would take pity on him and tend to his wounds, protecting him until his father's rage had abated.

Since joining the legions he had known few women, and with the exception of two – the Pictish chieftainess Cunomagla, and Marcellina the envoy's daughter in Britain – all of them had been prostitutes. There was a brothel in the city frequented by the palace staff, and Castus had been there a few times in recent months with Brinno and Sallustius, but he had formed no bond with any of the women there. In his heart he still felt tied to Afrodisia, his girl in Eboracum, although he knew he would never see her again. Floralia, he remembered, was a festival observed particularly by prostitutes...

But none of those working women resembled the trio on the couches before him now, with their sheen of luxurious living, their pearls and jewellery, their sly mocking smiles and laughter. These women resembled none he had ever met; they were more like fabulous birds from a wall painting.

‘Yes, now that one... Crescentilla, I really think that one looks quite special!'

Soft blooms pressed his forehead, and Castus felt petals itching down the back of his neck, sticking to the sweat. The smell of the flowers was sickening. A muscle was twitching in his cheek, and he tried to ease the aching grimace from his jaws. Hot shame rose through him, a keen sense of disgrace. Then anger – what did these women know of the world? What did they know of the violence and slaughter that allowed them to sit here in such amused ease: the burning villages out on the frontier, the men crippled in battles of which they had never even heard?

One of the laughing women, the lady in pink, glanced up and caught the look on his face. Her expression shifted and her fingers went to her throat as her laughter died.

‘Now,' said her languid friend, oblivious, ‘I really think we should try the peonies again, I thought that one was quite beautiful...'

Castus blinked, trying to appear more agreeable. This would soon be over, after all. Sallustius, he was sure, would have enjoyed the experience much more. He stared towards the rear of the courtyard, then dropped his eyes and found the third woman, who had remained silent, looking back at him.

She was younger than the other two, with an olive complexion, glossy black hair and deeply hooded dark eyes. She wore a simple yellow tunica and shawl, and sipped wine from a blue glass goblet in a gold lattice holder. Her face was a narrow blade. Castus stared at her, and she held his gaze.

‘Oh, very well, Plautiana, the white roses, if you insist. Now, we have only to choose the best of the three – what do you think, Sabina?'

The woman in yellow said nothing for a moment, but only smiled slowly, swirling the wine in her blue glass.

‘Which one do you like best?' she said, addressing Castus directly. The other two women appeared briefly startled.

‘Me, domina?' Castus said, his voice thick in his throat.

‘Yes. You're a man. Which do you prefer?' She gestured to the wreaths piled on the floor between the potted shrubs.

‘Oh, yes!' her friend exclaimed, grinning. ‘We should know what a man thinks, a man of action, like our emperor...'

Castus exhaled slowly, frowning as he stared at the flowers. Show me three swords, he thought, and I'd pick the best, no problem. Three javelins, even three horses. But not this. Was this some trick, some further humiliation? He had no idea what he was supposed to say.

‘I don't know.'

‘Oh, he doesn't know!' the woman in green said behind her hand. ‘Perhaps we should have made a wreath of... oh, raw onions and boot leather, or something?'

‘I am a soldier,' Castus said heavily, slowly. ‘This isn't what I do.'

Something in his words stilled the mirth of the two ladies. The woman in yellow regarded him over her goblet. She narrowed her eyes, and seemed to nod just slightly as she smiled.

‘I believe we're done here,' the eunuch said, with undisguised relief.

* * *

Brinno gave him a wry glance as he marched back into the Atrium of the Giants and took up his position before the doors of the tablinum.

‘Did that man I mentioned come back?' Castus whispered. His voice was still stiff with annoyance.

‘No,' Brinno said. He leaned a little towards Castus, flaring his nostrils.

‘Brother, are you wearing perfume?'

‘No, I'm not.'

‘There's a... Wait.' The young Frank raised his hand and brushed lightly at Castus's shoulder. A couple of stray petals fluttered to the mosaic floor. Brinno gave a quizzical half-smile.

‘Don't ask.'

Brinno raised an eyebrow, then pondered for a moment. ‘This is a place of many perils,' he said under his breath, nodding gravely.

Sound of footsteps from inside the tablinum, and both Protectores straightened abruptly as the doors swung back. The slave doormen stepped aside, and a figure in a heavy purple robe stepped over the threshold. Castus gazed straight ahead at the painted gods and giants on the far wall.

The emperor paused. There was the sound of a light sniff, then another. Then Constantine cleared his throat and walked on, trailed by his slaves and secretaries.

Releasing his breath, Castus fell into step with Brinno as they followed the imperial party out into the fresh air of the portico.

They found the dead man between the pilings of the bridge foundations, his body almost submerged in the muddy water. Castus stood on the riverbank and watched as a group of legionaries, stripped to their tunics to work on the bridge, waded in and hauled the corpse free.

The body turned as they dragged it clear of the heavy wooden baulks, and the blanched face rose to the surface. Castus felt his throat tighten. The dead man's thin lips were drawn back from the teeth, but even without the nervous gestures and the gold-clasped belt he was easy to recognise. The soldiers towed the body to the bank and heaved it up onto the mud, then wiped their hands and stamped back up onto the bridge scaffolding to get on with their work.

It was only an hour after dawn, and the vast cavalcade of the imperial retinue was pulling out of Colonia Agrippina. The day before, the emperor had made his ceremonial inspection of the new bridge, performing sacrifice and taking the auspices. All the omens had been good for the new construction. But this, Castus thought, could be nothing but a very poor omen indeed. He touched his brow with his thumb between his fingers, a warding sign against evil.

Luckily for the emperor and his engineers, there were few people around to see the corpse pulled from the river. The emperor's party had already set off along the road southwards, and the main street of the city was still flowing with carts and carriages, horses and marching men. Even the eyes of the gods were elsewhere this morning.

Gazing out over the slow grey flood of the Rhine, Castus could see the cleared ground on the far bank, and the first scaffolding and brick heaps of the new fortress that would soon rise there, a bridgehead fortification on the barbarian shore. The bridge itself was creeping steadily out from the bank: huge coffer-dams had been constructed, and men in barges were lowering stones and cement down to form the foundations for the bridge piers. Further out, in midstream, more barges were moored with cranes and tackle to lift massive timber pilings and drive them down into the riverbed. The bridge itself would be a permanent structure, with heavy wooden arches firmly bedded on nearly twenty solid stone and concrete piers. Now even the mighty Rhine would pass beneath the yoke of Rome, and no barbarian would dare oppose the will of Constantine – or so the orators had proclaimed during the ceremony the day before.

‘He must have gone for a walk along the bridge supports last night and fallen in,' Sallustius said, nudging the waterlogged corpse with the toe of his boot. ‘Probably drunk after the ceremony. Wonder who he was?'

‘He didn't fall off the bridge,' Castus said. ‘Look at where they found him – on the upstream side. He must have gone in further up and floated down here.'

Sallustius made an appraising face. ‘A neat deduction. Although it doesn't help matters, does it? Far easier to account for a dead drunk...'

Castus turned away from the river and made his way up the slope with the bow-legged former cavalryman walking by his side. Nearly a month had passed since he had last seen the nervous little man in the Atrium of the Giants; there had been no further sign of him, nor any word from Hierocles about whatever plot he might have been trying to report. But now here he was, dead in the Rhine as the imperial party left town. Presumably the centurion of the detachment of Legion XXII Primigenia working on the bridge would attend to the body, or the curator of Colonia Agrippina would. Either way, the emperor would be long gone by the time the man's identity was revealed, whoever he was.

‘Perhaps he dived off the bridge?' Sallustius said, glancing back. ‘Or how about swimming? He could have had a few drinks and decided to go for a night swim in the river.'

‘Wearing his cloak?'

Sallustius pondered this. ‘They brew their beer strong in Colonia, brother!'