The Boat of Fate (24 page)

Its aspect was dismal in the extreme. I saw a flat, wide compound, ankle-deep in mud. To one side was a straggle of squalid-looking huts; I made out the guardroom, beside it a taller building that despite its ruinous appearance must be the commandant’s headquarters. Beyond was a group of wooden dormitories and what looked to be bath huts; beyond again, set against a slope of rising ground, stood a line of low stone structures topped by squat chimneys. They smoked steadily, their fumes adding to the greyish pall that hung over the place. The wind veered, bringing with it a sulphurous stench. I coughed and spat; then rode forward, grimly, to present myself at the gates.

The tunnel stank and dripped. The torch I was holding flickered; the flame, leaping, showed blackened balks of timber, rock walls that streamed with damp. To one side a line of men, naked save for scraps of cloth about their loins, tramped stolidly, supporting themselves by iron handles let into the wall of the cave. Beneath their feet a tree-trunk turned jerkily. Its surface was carved with a coarse spiral; the screw delivered water from a sump to a channel that, meandering to the open air, lost itself in the quagmire of the compound. A gust of air blew from the workings below; it carried with it a miasma so foul my stomach rebelled on the instant. I halted; and the man in front of me looked back enquiringly. I waved him forward and followed, drawn by a deadly fascination. A short, rough-hewn ladder was clamped to the side wall of rock. Beyond it was another, and another. They conducted me, by easy stages, to Hell.

It was a little over a week since my arrival; a week spent largely in rendering my living quarters fit for human habitation. The worst of the holes in the roof had been patched now, the bedding raked out and burned, the walls and floors scrubbed with vinegar. As soon as I could tolerate sleeping in the place I had turned my attention to the rest of the camp. Mines, as I had known very well before I arrived, were traditionally staffed by the sweepings of the Empire, by convicts and slaves; I had been prepared for bad conditions, but not for what I found. The whole camp reeked of ordure; neither bath-houses nor latrines were functioning; the only water on the place was brought up daily by waggon from a village some five miles along the road. Like many such establishments the mine was an Imperial property leased for working to a civilian contractor, in this case one Paeonius, a Massilian; I had made enquiries for him in the town, only to be told he was away on a business trip. I sat down, as soon as I had an office in some sort of order, to draft a letter acquainting him with the state of his property and urgently requesting a meeting. I gave it to the muleteer who brought up the weekly supplies, crossing his palm with silver to ensure its safe delivery; I also instructed him to let me know the moment Paeonius returned to the town.

So far no summons had come for me, either from Burdigala or Mediolanum. I was glad of the work I had found to do; it kept me from brooding too long about my own affairs. The camp was run by some thirty unsavoury-looking scoundrels drawn from every part of the Empire. They spent the majority of their time lounging about the huts; I paraded them, split them into work parties, set them to cleaning the accumulations of rubbish from between the buildings. In charge was an ex-centurion broken from VII Gemina, Baudio by name; a great malodorous sack of a man, bearded and with furtive little pink-rimmed eyes. The previous overseer, he informed me, had drunk himself to death; looking at the sordid surroundings I could well understand his state of mind. Drink, Baudio admitted with a sort of heavy satisfaction, had been his downfall too. He had quarters next to mine; I ordered his room cleaned out and soused as well, to his intense disgust. I gave him a clear choice: either tidy up his cubicle and himself or get out into the dormitories with the rest. I had already decided what line I would take with the people under me. I could fall no farther from grace; since my time was limited anyway, I would make the best use of what remained to me, which didn’t include living like a pig in muck. There was nothing to be gained by discretion; I started making a noise my first afternoon on the camp, and kept on making it till I got my way.

Once the tidying-up operations were in progress I set out to acquaint myself with the working of the mine; it would be something else to keep my thoughts from my impending fate. I knew nothing at all of mining techniques; and what I saw at first left me little wiser. Crude lead, what Baudio called stagnum, was roasted from the ore in furnaces; but this was merely the start of the process of refinement. Repeated meltings and coolings finally produced crystals of pure metal, which were moulded into ingots and stacked aside for collection; but lead, as Baudio explained, was not what gave the workings their value to the State. The structures I had seen lining the hill were cupels, furnaces in which silver was extracted from the parent metal. Round them, when I visited them, was a scene of antlike activity. Sweating men scurried in all directions. Some were engaged in breaking apart the cooling clay with which the chambers were lined; others, working under the eyes of guards, stocked fresh chambers with their charges of fuel and ore; yet more worked massive bellows, directing blasts of air into the fires. The heat and noise were tremendous; while ever and again clouds of smoke and steam rolled back down on the workers, wholly obscuring them from sight. Mixed with the vapour came gusts of fumes that made my eyes stream, the breath catch in my throat. I left the area hurriedly, followed by the sardonic Baudio.

‘What happens to them?’ I asked when I could breathe freely again. ‘Surely they can’t live long in a stink like that?’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that,’ he said. ‘Some of ’em last for years. They get used to it. It gets them in the end, of course. Rots their lungs.’

‘And?’

‘And what?’

‘When they die, man. What then?’

‘The Empire,’ he said, with ponderous sarcasm, ‘finds us some more. Because if it didn’t, production would go down. And that would never, never do. . . .’

It was Baudio now who was my guide. He preceded me down the ladders while round me the din grew louder. The throat of the pit was full of machinery, monstrous wheels that creaked and rumbled each below the next. Buckets attached to their rims lifted water stage by stage from the workings; it was discharged, Baudio told me--mouth close to my ear--into conduits driven through the sides of the hill above. I shouted, ‘When do they stop?’ He shook his head, cupping a hand to his ear. I shouted again, and he bellowed back an answer. ‘Never. . .’

I screwed my eyes shut in the thick dark, stared up again. Now I could just make out the occupants of the treadmills. They tramped in remorseless, hopeless rhythm, legs pumping, arms climbing the rotating wooden bars. Some were little more than boys; all were wholly naked. The water that rained back endlessly gleamed on shoulders and hips; their hair hung soaked and matted across their eyes. They couldn’t stop, I realised, not till they were released; they would be whirled and battered by the momentum of the wheels. As I stared, more water jetted from one of them. For a moment, stupidly, I didn’t understand; then I realised he was urinating indifferently into the shaft.

I turned away, found Baudio gripping my arm. I knocked his hand away, swearing, waved him forward again, stooping now to save crashing my head against the lowering roof of rock.

The light was dimmer than ever. I guessed more than I saw. Other figures, girls and women among them, moved in slow shuffling processions, bent under the weight of bulky baskets of ore. Water was everywhere; they sloshed through it endlessly, forward and back from the shaft. Snakes of hair draggled on their shoulders; their thighs and bellies gleamed pale as things long-drowned. Baudio shouted again in my ear. ‘They don’t like too many torches; reckon they use up all the air. . . .’

In the farthest depths I came on a tableau of death. An old man, grey-bearded and gaunt, lay stretched on the rock, blood on his throat and mouth. A younger man knelt over him, naked like the rest. He was mumbling and chanting; I saw his hand move, over and over, making the sign of the Cross. As if any God could look below the ground, and see what I had seen, and boast how he, and he only, conceived the world.

Baudio faced me across the rickety desk.

I had passed a sleepless night. Most of the time I spent pacing forward and back across the little room; I couldn’t sit still, let alone lie down to rest. It seemed the stink of the mine infused my nostrils, its din still rang in my brain. In the small hours I left my quarters, walked the perimeter of the camp. It was silent now and dark, save for a sporadic glowing from the cupels. I stood a long time by the entrance to the pit. The throat of the shaft was closed for the night by a heavy iron grating. A torch burned in a niche; beneath it a solitary sentry snored at his post, head lolling sideways against the rock. As I stood I became aware by degrees of a deep rumbling, permeating the stillness of the night. It was a sound more felt than heard, that seemed to shake the very ground; the thunder of those hellish wheels, turning endlessly beneath my feet.

I walked back to the Praetorium. My eyes had become accustomed to the dark; as I mounted the steps I saw, or thought I saw, a ghostly figure flick between two of the nearer huts. I spoke sharply, but there was no reply; the camp lay deserted and quiet.

The night was warm, but I found I was shivering. I hunted myself out some wine, took it to my quarters. Sleep was farther away from me than ever; I sat drinking steadily, watching the light grow in the sky. I reminded myself, a score of times, that my fate was already sealed just as surely as the fate of those creatures in the mine. Any hour, now, my own summons would come; perhaps the courier was already on the road. Let those responsible answer to their consciences; the affairs of this world were no longer my concern.

It was useless. By dawn the wine was finished but my decision had been reached. I sat a while longer, watching the steely light spread and brighten over the compound; then I sent for Baudio.

I had made a rough list of my requirements; I ticked the items off as I talked, glaring morosely up at the overseer.

‘The pit workers will be divided into three shifts. Have you a list of their names?’

He shrugged, stifling a yawn. ‘Couldn’t say. Somebody has, I expect.’

‘Have it on my desk by midday. Also get me a team together from the off-duty overseers. I want every dormitory hut put in order as soon as possible, the work to start immediately. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, but . . .’

‘No buts, Baudio. How many of the huts are in use at present?’

‘Two,’ he said sulkily. ‘The two nearest here. And a bit of the one beyond. Most of the rest have lost half their roofs.’

‘That can be attended to. I want a man to ride to Massilia. He is to bring back carpenters and a tiler. If none are available we shall do the work ourselves. Is that clear?’

‘May I ask,’ he said, ‘to what use the dormitories are to be put?’

‘No, you may not. Which of those wretches in the workings are at present allowed the open air?’

He leered. ‘None, officially. . .’

‘What do you mean?’

He raised his eyebrows patiently, as if explaining to a child. ‘Some of the young ones, at night. The men need their relaxation.’

‘Do they?’ I said coldly. ‘Let it be known round the camp that the practice will stop as from now. Future offenders will be put to death. If the men need their relaxation, as you put it, they must make do with each other. Or they may keep goats; I’m given to understand the satisfaction is superior.’

He gestured exaggeratedly. ‘You can’t run a camp like this. . . .’

‘Do you question my right to command here, centurion?’

‘No, but. . .’

‘Then damn your impertinence, be silent. I have one answer to insubordination, Baudio. It is short, sharp and final.’

I dropped a hand to my belt; he stepped back a pace, looking alarmed. I glared at him; eventually he lowered his eyes. ‘Also,’ I went on in a more normal tone, ‘you will oblige me by taking a bath. It’s not too late to begin conducting yourself as an officer of the Roman Army.’

Something like triumph gleamed in his eyes. ‘Beg pardon, sir,’ he said. ‘I can’t do that.’

‘For what reason?’

‘No water in the bath-house, sir.’

‘I was coming to that. Why is there no water?’

‘None on the camp, sir, except what comes in the cart.’

‘And I suppose the slaves drink the filth from the mine. No wonder they die like flies. Why is there no water on the camp?’

‘Don’t know, sir. Aqueduct just dried up.’

‘Aqueducts,’ I said, ‘do not “just dry up”, Baudio.’ I made a note on the list. ‘Have two horses ready at first light tomorrow. Have yourself ready as well.’

He saluted. ‘That all, sir?’ He was starting to look relieved.

‘By no means. I saw children working at the face. They will be removed. If the Empire is so impoverished as to need child labour at least they can be found light work in the open air. As a first step nobody under the age of ten is to be employed below ground. If they don’t know their age you must guess it. Guess accurately; I shall be guessing too on my next inspection. The slaves remaining in the mine will be decently clothed. Everyone will wear a breechcloth; in addition girls and women are to be provided with shifts, or at the least a breastband. See to that at once.’

He wagged his hands in alarm. ‘Where am I supposed to get things like that? There’s nothing on the camp . . .’

‘Then send to Massilia. Any coarse material will serve, provided it is strong. If necessary they can stitch garments for themselves.’

‘Most of them,’ he said sullenly, ‘prefer to be as they are. The water chafes ’em, and the sores go ulcerous. And if they’re on the wheels they can’t stop to piss.’

‘Clothe them, Baudio,’ I said. ‘The other things will be attended to. I shall inspect the mine again in two days’ time; if I find naked slaves the overseers will be flogged. Have you got all that?’