Hadrian's wall (9 page)

Marcus glanced over his shoulder, still not comprehending.

"I stabbed his horse with my brooch pin," Valeria explained again.

"They ran when they heard your horses," Clodius added gloomily. His clothes were filthy, his scabbard empty, his neck red. The blood from his wound had dried like a bib on his bright new chain mail, baptizing the armor with a reddish brown stain. "They took nothing but a few pinecones."

"Cones?"

"Stone pine, Marcus!" Valeria said. "For the ceremonies of Mithras. I was bringing them to you as a present, but the barbarian decided they would protect him-"

The praefectus shook his head. "Cones. By the gods."

"They must have slipped through as traders," a centurion suggested. "Or over the top at night. A bribed sentry, perhaps. It was a bold gamble."

"A gamble for what, Longinus?"

"Loot, I suppose."

"They wanted the lady Valeria," Clodius said.

"My escorts were willing to die before that happened," Valeria interjected. She didn't want the men punished. "Brave Clodius had his throat cut."

"Brave who?"

The junior tribune saluted in pained embarrassment. "One-Year Appointed Tribune Gnaeus Clodius Albinus, reporting for duty, praetor."

"By the horns of Mithras, it gets worse and worse."

Clodius bowed his head. "This is not how I imagined us meeting, praefectus."

"Nor did I. Well, welcome to Britannia, junior tribune. It appears you've had quite a reception."

Clodius stood stiffly. "Let me remount, and we'll see the reception!"

"So I'd hope. And your horse?"

He glanced around, immediately miserable again. "It ran away."

Someone laughed. A sharp glance from Marcus silenced it. Then the praefectus glanced again at the woman behind him. "Go to the cart and repair your clothing." It wasn't a suggestion, it was an order. She slipped off the horse's rump and went to Savia, who'd retrieved Valeria's cloak and now bundled her in it.

"And for the sake of Mars, find something to bandage your throat, tribune," Marcus growled. "You're dripping like a gutter." Clodius retreated to comply.

There was noise, a crash of branches, and Galba and his troopers came bursting out, horses lathered, men cut from vine and twig, their leader furious and frustrated, glancing at Valeria with disbelief. He saluted. "No sign of them, praefectus."

"No sign?" Marcus looked at one of the mounts. Titus was sitting behind a trooper with a rope bound around his wrists, face turned away. "Who's that man there?"

"One of mine, ambushed. We found him unconscious and bound."

"And these brigands? Are they smoke that vanishes?"

"They're quick, and they know this wood, I think. Every trail and every hole." Galba looked at Valeria again. "My apologies, praefectus. I thought us almost home and had orders to collect those remounts. If I'd insisted your lady stay with me-"

"It was my decision to hurry, not Galba's," Valeria corrected. "Nor Clodius, nor Titus. I simply yearned to see you and insisted on the quickest way."

Marcus scowled. "Yet all of you were surprised. And if Galba hadn't met my exercise near the Wall and told me you were near, we might not have rescued you at all."

"Fortune played with us this day," the senior tribune observed grimly. "Ill and then good. If gods exist, then perhaps they're at war with each other."

"It was the one true God who saved us," Savia spoke up. "I was praying."

Marcus ignored this. "But why Valeria?"

"For ransom," Galba said. "A wealthy husband-to-be, a senator's daughter. I wouldn't have thought any man so bold or foolish, but this rogue must be both."

The praetor nodded glumly. It was no secret in the province that his family was rich. Every man credited it for Marcus's appointment to the Petriana. "Galba, how far did you hunt?"

"No more than a quarter mile."

"Then we'll run them down yet." Marcus turned to the troop of cavalry behind him. "Decurion! Half to the right, half to the left! Now, into the trees! Find them!"

The Roman horse plunged gamely into the forest, but it was hard going. The animals stumbled on the uneven ground, branches swatted at the rider's helmets, and brush caught on weapons. They looked, and sweated, for hours, but had no better luck than Galba had. The Celts had disappeared like mist before the sun.

The bodyguard Cassius, gladiator and slave, had disappeared with them.

If all the spectacles of human existence, a wedding is the most public and private of ceremonial contracts. It is that rare moment in Roman life where a display of affection is allowed and even encouraged, and yet the true emotions of the principals remain hidden behind a veil of ritual and revelry. A Roman wedding is always a mixture of love, strategy, breeding, and money, and a Roman marriage is a mysterious combination of companionship, alliance, selfishness, and separation. No outsider can understand its complexities. As for sex, well, that is always simpler with one's slaves.

Yet it seems that if Valeria is to be fully understood, then her relationship to her new husband is crucial to that understanding. Perhaps this makes me a voyeur, but I'm a voyeur in quest not of sexual titillation but of high truth: the political consequences of betrothal. At least that's my justification. I'll confide in these private pages that it's the unraveling of the human heart, not the frailties of empire, that really sustains my odyssey. So I'm human. What of it?

My informants in this matter are two. Valeria's handmaid Savia was as shamelessly curious as I am, and eventually won from her mistress a bride's assessment. Savia comes back to my interrogation chamber in a mood of tentative triumph, sensing how necessary she's become to my investigation. She still hopes I'll buy her. She tells much of what I am about to relate.

The other that I interview is the centurion Lucius Falco, the veteran who fought with Galba. He lent his modest villa for the wedding and became a temporary confidant of Marcus. There's some interesting nobility to this soldier, I sense, a quiet belief in happiness and justice that some would judge admirable. Others, naive.

There is no requirement in Roman law for a wedding ceremony, of course. Even custom often dispenses with formal ritual. Yet Falco tells me that he and his wife were eager for the union to be formalized in their home, located near the fort of the Petriana on Hadrian's Wall.

"Why?" I ask him, to judge the honesty of an answer I already know. Like the other soldiers I'm interviewing, Falco is a practical and stoic man, his military bearing giving him dignity and his legionary ancestry giving him pride. Of mixed Roman and Briton blood, he is the son of a son of a son of soldiers of the Sixth Victrix-each generation following the next into the legion as the army strains to maintain its numbers, each retiree adding to the estate his family has established in the lee of the Wall. This history gives him a sophistication I can make use of; he understands the mix of dependency and resentment that swirls on both sides of the barrier. He knows how permeable a Roman border can be.

"My wife urged that we host it in order to be polite," he replies to my question. "Lucinda is sympathetic to officers' wives on the Wall. It's a male world, lonely for highborn women, with brides strung out along eighty miles of stone and mortar. And a wedding is as daunting for a maiden as it's longed for."

Not as candid an answer as I would like. "You'd also attain social prestige by hosting the wedding of a commanding officer," I suggest.

He shrugs. "Undeniably. My family's house has been pressed into duty for generations. We've given shelter to the good and the bad: to inspectors like you, to military contractors, to magistrates, to generals, and to their wives, mistresses, and courtesans. It's the Bite."

The Bite, I know, is what soldiers such as Falco pay their commanders to be kept at the Wall and not sent overseas. The bribes also buy leave to tend to crops and animals. Playing host to the parasites of officialdom is a way for an officer to ingratiate himself.

"You didn't resent this new commander?"

"I had good relations with Galba and expected the same with Marcus."

"You didn't have to choose between them?"

"I try to stay on good terms with everyone. A man advances only as fast as his friends allow it."

"I appreciate your candor."

He smiles. "Lucinda had another motive. She said cavalrymen have the patience of a battering ram and the delicacy of an elephant. She wanted to befriend Marcus's new wife and give her encouragement."

"You agreed?"

He laughs. "I complained how much it was going to cost!"

"Yet the wedding was an investment."

"Luanda told me Marcus might ride to my rescue one day. I told her that on the night in question, Marcus would be too busy riding his new bride!"

"And her response to that?"

"She hit me with a spoon."

I shift restlessly, considering how to get to what I really want. "Your wife is not highborn herself is she?"

For the first time Falco looks at me warily, as if I might know more than he assumed. To judge what my informants tell me, I have to know something of who they are, so I ask ahead. "She's a freedwoman," he says. "My first wife died, and Lucinda was my closest slave. We fell in love…"

"Not so extraordinary these days. A love match, I mean."

"I consider myself a lucky man."

"What I'm after is the degree of love between Marcus and Valeria, the mood you saw on their wedding night."

"Wedding night! That's the least typical of all the nights of a marriage. And yet we could all see that Marcus was nervous…"

The wedding of Marcus and Valeria began in the long blue twilight that reigns in the spring of Britannia's north. Clouds blew away to leave the sky as clear as a river pool, the first evening star glowing like a welcoming lamp. The lights of the villa of Falco and Lucinda were lit in reply, candles flickering among hanging garlands and oil lamps throwing a wavering blush. Slaves hummed songs of merriment in anticipation of a banquet of such excess that there'd be delicacies enough even for the field hands to share: chicken in fish sauce, pork with apricot preserves, milk-fed snails, stuffed hare, salmon in pastry skin, lentils and chestnuts, onions and leeks, oysters packed in seaweed, and shrimp hauled in brine barrels from the coast. The kitchens steamed and smoked with grouse, pigeon, stewed lamprey, and haunches of venison. There were platters of olives and cheese, sweet cakes and sweetmeats, boiled eggs, pickled vegetables, and dried figs. Flasks of honeyed mead glowed like amber, while Briton beer and Italian wine filled flagon and cup. Some of the food had to be imported, given the paucity of imagination of Britannia's cooks, but Marcus and Falco had spread enough coin to quiet any grumbling about Roman snobbery. So much money, in fact, that it ensured a steady stream of well-wishers and gifts to the villa door.

An aristocrat's honor was the honor of his neighborhood. The alliance of Marcus and Valeria promised to elevate the status of not just the Petriana cavalry but also the adjoining village. A senator's daughter! Even the natives coveted an invitation.

The loan of his villa had given the centurion Falco a tentative familiarity with his new commander, of course. Marcus had money and position, and Falco had experience and local ancestry. Each could appreciate the usefulness of the other, and the centurion tried to cement a relationship as they dressed.

"So what's your feeling about ending bachelorhood, praefectus?" Falco asked conversationally as Marcus carefully folded and draped his ceremonial white toga, the Roman muttering about the intricacy of patrician dress. "Are you gaining a companion or losing freedom?"

Marcus frowned at himself as he tilted one of Lucinda's face mirrors this way and that. He disliked ceremony and was uneasy being the center of attention. Both, unfortunately, came with his new command. "You're the married one-you tell me. I've gained this posting and a new chance. What Valeria will become remains to be seen. She seems sweet enough."

"Sweet! By the gods, she's beautiful! Eyes like a starry night, skin like the blossom of spring, the curves of a Venus-"

"You'd better not let Lucinda hear such poetry. She'd be jealous."

"She was jealous the moment that nymph rode in on her mule cart, looking better after ambush than other women after their bath. I envy you this wedding night."

Marcus shook his head. "Thank the gods it's even occurring. That thief half stripped her. To almost lose the girl near my doorstep, and with it my appointment… what near disaster I escaped! Can you imagine the fury of her father? The outrage of mine? I've come a thousand miles to make my reputation, not squander it."

"You'll have your revenge. Galba's informants are offering gold, and barbarians will sell their own mothers. Meanwhile, you have a more delicious conquest."

Marcus's polite smile betrayed unease. The truth was that he was awkward with men and shy with women. Females had always seemed utterly mysterious, frequently frivolous, and deliberately unpredictable. Moreover, he'd never had a virgin. "I know little of young women," he confessed.

"That will change tonight."

"It's not that I'm not looking forward to her. It's just-"

"You're a good horseman, no?"

"You're the cavalryman to judge that."

"Women are no different than a horse. Slow and gentle is the best way. At the least the result is children. At the best, love!"

"Yes, love." Marcus looked pensive. "The plebes marry for it, you know. The Christians attribute it to their strange skinny god. For people of my rank it's not so simple. I'm not sure I understand the word at all."

"You don't understand, you feel."

"She's so beautiful that it's… daunting. The fact that we don't know each other, I mean. And when I said I don't know women, I meant I don't know about living with them. What to do after the bed."

"Here's the secret: they pretty much take care of themselves. Like horses, again. And they'll take care of you, if you let them."

"You compare everything to horses."

"Horses are what I know."

"And now, for me, a woman." The groom stood straighter, mentally rehearsing his entrance. "I betrothed to get this posting, Falco. I could live in Rome on my family's fortune, wanting nothing, but that's not my destiny. My father made his fortune in salt but longs for martial honor. I want to prove myself. It was her father who suggested this union-"

"Favored by the gods, as I said."

So why did he feel such misgiving? Because in truth he was a scholar, not a soldier. The tribune he'd supplanted, this gruesome Galba, had seen through his martial pose and golden armor in an instant. He felt uncomfortable amid these rude people. Marcus feared the woman would find him out too, and mock his quiet nature. But if she could help him instead… "Valeria is sweet, if somewhat headstrong."

"She seems to have a lively intelligence."

"She half-suggested a Christian priest! It's her maid's influence.

I told her I'll not have a cult that pretends to eat their god. Centurion Sextus serves the shrine of the garrison's spring. He'll do well enough."

"And she agreed?"

"She seemed to want to please."

"Obedience is a good sign."

"Yes." He hesitated. "I changed her mind, I suspect, but not her heart. Do you know that she told Galba's soldiers that she wished she could ride like a man?"

"We've all heard of her courage."

"She could have broken her neck, and she came to me looking like a harlot. My mother never rode. Nor my grandmothers."

"So thank the Fates you're not marrying them! These are modern times, praefectus. New ideas are abroad in the world. Wait until you meet some of the wild women of the north: I've seen them fight, curse, plow, bargain, command, spit, and piss."

Marcus grimaced. "That's why I want a bride who's a proper Roman, centurion. I didn't come a thousand miles to wed a barbarian. I came to defeat them."

The banquet hall was on fire with light, its banked candles as thick as the glint of sun on a ruffled lake. The air was heady with the scent of spice, wine, male oils, and female perfume. And yet Valeria, in the traditional wedding gown of white with saffron veil, dominated the gathering as a jewel dominates its setting, her long dark hair a swirling river beneath its golden, translucent net. Her tresses had been braided into six parts and parted with the silver spearhead of Bellona, sister of Mars, and three curls fell past each cheek, in the manner of the Vestal Virgins. Her sandals were yellow and her waist cinched by an intricately knotted golden cord that only her husband could untie.

Valeria found to her surprise that she wasn't as frightened as she'd feared. The groom was still a stranger but a handsome and earnest one, she judged, who'd been solicitous after the initial confusion of the ambush and compliant with her wedding plans. He seemed a bit stolid-his tolerance of tardy deliveries had pushed the date of their union to early unlucky May, despite her best efforts- but then he was a man of learning who said belief in bad luck was silly superstition. She looked forward to knowing him, while shivering slightly at the prospect of lovemaking. Would it enchant? Would it hurt? She wished he'd been bolder in their embraces so far-more experience would reassure her-but his shyness also made him less threatening. If he'd done nothing yet to ignite the kind of love that the druidess had forecast in Londinium… well, that would come.

Lucinda had tried to explain it. "Men don't talk as openly of their heart, but they feel as much as we do. You'll see his moods and learn to read and direct and love him." "Like you and centurion Falco?" She laughed. "I'm still getting him in harness." "So love comes?"

"His nature is to protect you. You'll teach him to hold you as well. And when he does-" The matron smiled. "That's when the pair of you becomes stronger than iron against all the cares of the world."

The simple ceremony came first. Sextus, a good-natured and simple-spoken veteran of the Wall, did a creditable and diplomatic job, calling on his spring's goddess to let the couple's happiness well upward like a fountain. In deference to the varied beliefs of all those present, he asked for all the other gods-Christian, Roman, and Celtic-to join in blessing the union.

Marcus stood stiffly during the recitation, as if afraid of making a mistake. Valeria was appropriately demure but stole glances at her new husband. When he took her right hand in his to promise fidelity, the firm grip was more suggestive of a treaty or business agreement than a touch of love, but when he took her left, it was with a gentle touch that he slipped a ring on that fourth finger that physicians teach leads with a nerve directly to the heart. The ring bore a sculpted intaglio of the goddess Fortuna: luck, perhaps, to counter her fears about the wedding's timing. Finally he lifted her veil, and she gave her new husband a tremulous smile. And that was that, because, as was proper, he made no move to embrace or kiss her yet. That must wait until the end of the feasting. Valeria was led to a banquet couch where, on her wedding night alone, she'd be allowed to recline at supper like a man.

"And now eat and drink so that your joy might become theirs!" Sextus concluded.

The party obeyed with gusto.

There was song from the lute and pipes, games of wit, and poems of love. A village maiden leaped upward to dance a vigorous jig with the speed of swallow wings, kicking and twirling to the thump of ancient drums. The music was primitive and simple, but the song was so primeval that it seemed like blood pumping to Valeria's heart, an echo of a wilder world. Was that what it was like beyond the Wall? She felt superior, as reigning lady of the fortress and its civilization now. Yet what must it be like to be as free as this wild Celt, dancing and drinking and catching men's eyes…

From duty comes devotion, and from devotion comes love…

Slaves slipped in and among the guests like wraiths, refilling plate and goblet, furtively nibbling themselves, and secretly smiling at the growing drunkenness of the guests. One slave in particular was tall and well muscled but noticeably clumsy, with the feral look of a recent captive. What defeat, she wondered, had led him here? Had he left his own wife behind?

The wounded Clodius, reclining on another couch, also studied the awkward servant, but with ill humor. While most of the assembly was boisterous, the young tribune was uncharacteristically quiet. He'd watched the brief ceremony that gave Valeria to her new husband with a tight smile, and now he watched the slave to keep his stare from fixating on the young bride. She reclined on her wedding couch like a ripe golden apple, her skin smooth and flawless, her dark eyes bright and triumphant, her hair like a bolt of Asian silk, and watching her was a kind of exquisite torture. Wed to a wooden man who seemed embarrassed even to have Clodius on his staff, a praefectus who had more appreciation for his office than for the woman who'd given it to him…

Clodius also sat well away from Galba, who, he suspected, was laying the blame for the ambush on him. By the gods, it hadn't been bis decision to get those remounts! And yet it was he who had stumbled into a Celtic ambush, and he who had been made a fool of. Word of how he had greeted his commander, stripped of sword and mount, had swiftly made its way through the fort. One turma of soldiers had snapped to attention before him with red lines painted across their throats, grinning like idiots.

Never had he endured such humiliation.

How long this single year would drag! The few Roman girls at the party were plain and boring provincial brats, giggling and dull, while the Celtic lasses were rudely independent and, in any event, beneath his station. None came close to the beauty of Valeria. Worst of all, his neck wound ached where the bandit had cut it, forcing him to wear a humiliating neckerchief to hide the cut.

What he could do was drink, and he did so industriously. He imbibed his wine as if parched and soon was observing the wedding party through an alcoholic haze. Everyone seemed to be having fun, which made his own gloom worse. Even the slaves seemed to be enjoying themselves, except the big one who kept dropping things. "Who's that slave over there, the tall and clumsy one?" he croaked irritably to a merchant named Torus. "The oaf looks like a mule in a pottery shed."

The Briton looked where his seatmate was gesturing. "That's our grand Scotti prince, I'm told. Captured by Falco in recent battle. Odo, I think his name is."

"A prince cleaning food scraps?"

"It was Galba who set the trap for him."

"Ah, yes, Galba. Our premier strategist." Clodius looked across the room. The senior tribune sat in the shadows quiet and alone, sipping little, never looking at the bridal pair, and ignoring attempts at conversation. "Our unconquered warrior. Except when allowing my throat to be cut."

"It was a barbarian who cut you, not the senior tribune. Probably some other hotheaded buck just like you, or that Eiru slave there. All of you out to end life at its beginning, when the real purpose is to enjoy it to its end."

"Yes. Like him." Clodius drained his cup. "Brother in arms to Britlet scum." He reached for a fig, eyeing Valeria morosely, and as his arm extended, he accidentally knocked over the flagon of his seatmate's drink. Before he could right it, beer foamed off a slate table in a white cascade. He looked at it numbly while heads swung to the clatter. Damn them for noticing.

"My opinion of Briton beer!" Clodius shouted.

A Roman laughed. Encouraged, the young tribune reared up and swayed unsteadily, making the assembled guests titter in anticipation. The tribune's scarf caused a whisper of explanation.

"In fact, my opinion to date of bastard Britannia!"