The Druid King (18 page)

The legionnaires themselves were bivouacked in neat rows of identical eight-man leather tents separated by dirt avenues as straight as a Roman road, and thousands of them sat outside enjoying the sunshine, eating porridge, drinking wine, mending armor, sharpening swords and javelins.

Caesar led him past a much smaller group of tents isolated from the main Roman troop encampments that, strangely, were under guard. Stranger still, Vercingetorix was surprised to see Diviacx passing from one to another.

“The students from the grammaticus are quartered within,” said Caesar.

“The hostages, you mean.”

“They
are,
after all, receiving the benefits of a Roman education,” Caesar insisted mildly.

“Diviacx is teaching Gauls how to be Romans?”

“Here we have students from many of your tribes, and who would the leaders thereof trust to supervise them inside a Roman encampment but a druid?”

“And the only druid you could find who would so serve is Diviacx,” Vercingetorix said sourly.

“I sense you love him not.”

“How could I love the man who condemned my father to death?”

“How indeed?” said Caesar. He gave Vercingetorix a sidelong speculative look. “As one man of destiny to another, I find him impossible to love myself. Though he is an ally of sorts, there is something about him I find rather despicable.”

“Then why do you use him?”

“Why don’t
you
kill him?” Caesar asked slyly.

“Kill a druid?” exclaimed Vercingetorix. “If I did such a thing, even the Arverni . . .” He stayed himself, realizing that Caesar’s question had been rhetorical.

Caesar nodded. “Even men of destiny are slaves of necessity,” he said. “Some tools—a well-made sword, a good knife, a nicely crafted stylus even—one may come to love. Others—an ordinary mallet, a plain pot, a peasant’s scythe—may lack all charm but still serve necessity. And when there is no other at hand . . .” He shrugged.

They reached a section of tents pitched close by the eastern wall, well away from both the legionnaires’ bivouacs and the hostage tents. There were a score of them, set more widely apart than those of the legionnaires, and a Gallic tribal standard was set up before each of them. Caesar halted before an Arverne bear.

“Your quarters,” he said, drawing aside the flap and ushering Vercingetorix into a scene more like the bedchamber of a Roman harlot than an officer’s field quarters.

There was a Roman-style bed raised up off the ground on curved and carved wooden legs and piled with the pelts of bear and lynx.
There were wooden tables, small and large, all painted in red and black, the largest and most elaborate ornamented with fittings of brass. There were brass and bronze serving plates and goblets embellished with silver. Overfragrant oil burned in brass lamps, giving off a sickeningly sweet odor of lavender. Above the bed hung a tapestry depicting three creatures that seemed half man and half goat performing sexual acts with naked women, one of which Vercingetorix would not have believed possible. Fierce desire rose unbidden in his loins, and a burning blush bloomed on his cheeks.

“Admittedly a bit on the Spartan side,” said Caesar, “but I hope you’ll find it hospitable enough for a military camp. And at least you won’t have to worry about being cold and lonely at night.”

He clapped his hands, once, twice, thrice, and two women entered the tent, one red-haired and draped in a loose black robe, the other black-haired and wearing a robe of red. Both were in the first flower of youth and stunningly beautiful. Vercingetorix found himself bending forward at the hips in an attempt to hide the state of his arousal. Caesar nodded, and the black-haired woman fetched them goblets while the other took up a small amphora and poured wine.

“Your body servants,” said Caesar, “and never fear, they have been well schooled to serve your body.”

He nodded again, and both women doffed their robes with simultaneous flourishes and openly lubricious smiles. Underneath they wore tiny breechclouts, black for the black-haired one, red for the red, and nothing more.

Vercingetorix had never in his life seen two women in such a near-naked state at the same time, had never seen any woman as perfectly formed as these, had never beheld a single woman willing to slake his lust at all. But he sensed danger here, some kind of sweet trap, in which these two women and all that surrounded them were the bait.

Then too, there were his men to consider, not just in terms of the injustice of their relative discomfort, but of how they would regard a leader who luxuriated here while they camped outside with their horses.

It appears to be true! Caesar marveled as he observed Vercingetorix’s reaction to the sudden revelation of nubile feminine flesh. His eyes were practically popping out of his head, his priapic state was amusingly obvious, and more amusing still were his embarrassed attempts to conceal it. Either the boy
is
a virgin, or at the least his experience must be severely limited.

Vercingetorix nodded toward the two body servants in a manner that he no doubt deemed covert, and leaned closer to Caesar. “A word in private. . . ?” he whispered.

Caesar led him over to a far corner of the tent.

“It’s not that I don’t appreciate your hospitality, Caesar,” Vercingetorix said, “but I do not deem it wise to enjoy such luxuries while my men sleep outside in the open. A commander should share not only the dangers but the conditions of his troops, not set himself above and apart. And so I will sleep outside with them, if it does not offend you.”

“No offense taken,” Caesar told him. “This tent will remain yours whenever you wish to use it, for as long as you like.” He nodded in the direction of the body servants, now donning their robes. “For whatever you like.”

Did the boy blush? Be that as it may, Vercingetorix gave Caesar a cool, measuring look with those eyes that seemed decades older than the rest of him. “I do find it peculiar that you offer to quarter the Gallic commanders here together. . . .”

“How so?” said Caesar, taking care to keep his voice and visage neutral.

“Why separate commanders from their troops?” asked Vercingetorix. “Why quarter rival commanders close by each other instead?”

What a strange youth this Vercingetorix was, one moment an embarrassed boy, the next a cunning general in danger of perceiving the true situation all too clearly.

“Your second question is the answer to your first, my young friend. It is my hope that quartering the commanders of the individual tribal forces close together may cause them to develop a camaraderie and come to see themselves as the leaders of a united Gallic auxiliary army.” Caesar gave Vercingetorix an ingenuous smile. “Did not your father seek something similar?” he said.

“To drive you out of Gaul,” said Vercingetorix. “And they killed him for it,” he added perplexedly. “And I still do not quite understand why you are so willing to see Gaul united—”

“Under Rome, not against us,” Caesar told him. “Your father failed because the vergobrets of Gaul saw no advantage in being united against me under him. But I will show the advantage of uniting under a Roman proconsul for profit and civilization.”

Caesar could see that, virgin or not, Vercingetorix was not naïve enough to swallow this whole, even though there was more truth than falsehood in it.

“Dine with me in my tent tonight,” he said, “and much will be made clear.”

But not everything, my young friend.

If the tent that Caesar had offered him seemed to Vercingetorix fit for a Roman bordello, Caesar’s own would have been fit for a king if the Romans had one. It was four times the size of the ordinary tents and divided into separate chambers by hanging tapestries depicting landscapes from various countries that must be Roman provinces, and the cloth borders framing them were interwoven with threads of gold. Instead of a bare earthen floor, there were carpets. The oil lamps illumining the tent were of gold, and the perfume they gave off was subtle. Two musicians sat in a far corner of the dining chamber, one strumming a stringed instrument, the other playing a set of wooden pipes. There was a large, low dining table set with silver platters and small golden plates offering fruits, nutmeats, olives, pastes of various strange kinds and colors, fishes in sauces, golden goblets, a small amphora of wine.

Three low plushly padded couches were set up around the table. One was empty. Caesar reclined on another, wearing a white toga trimmed in crimson. Reclining on the other couch was a stunningly beautiful young woman, blonde and fair-skinned like a Gaul, but wearing a diaphanous flowing white dress cut low in the Roman style, with her hair likewise elaborately done up in ribbons and a silver tiara trimmed with some shiny grayish gems that did not seem to be minerals.

The smile with which she greeted him was radiant.

Caesar rose and escorted him to the third couch with a hostly gesture which he hardly noticed, and if this was accompanied by words of greeting, Vercingetorix didn’t hear them. His attention was captured by the woman, not just by her beauty, but by the way her eyes tracked his every movement. Even when Caesar kissed her lightly on the lips before returning to his own couch, her eyes remained on him.

It was arousing, intriguing, but also embarrassing, for she must know him, and therefore they must have met. But how could he have possibly failed to remember meeting a woman like this?

“This lovely creature is one of the prize pupils of our Roman grammaticus,” said Caesar, “and, uh, a protégée of mine. Her name is—”

“Marah,” she said.

“Marah!”

“You two know each other?” said Caesar. “What an amazing coincidence!”

Too amazing to
be
coincidence, Vercingetorix realized. “We . . . met as children,” he said carefully.

“He offered to make me his queen,” said Marah with a little laugh that, though gently mocking, seemed affectionate as well.

“His queen?” said Caesar.

“It’s a long story,” Vercingetorix said dismissively, blushing at the memory of his boyhood braggadocio, but also rendered wary by this confluence of his old boast, the girl he had made it to, and the man who his vision had told him was destined to turn it into reality.

But Marah had no such compunction.

“It was on the day his father sought to make himself king,” she said.

“He just couldn’t quite keep the secret, and I was a little provincial girl impressed by the son of a local chieftain who was even more impressed with himself. . . .”

“And what have you now become?” Vercingetorix snapped, chagrined by the memory and more than a little vexed by her speaking the truth of it.

“A civilized and educated lady—”

“Impressed by a
Roman general
who is even more impressed with himself!”

Caesar broke the moment of tension with a laugh. “Can you blame her? Can you blame me? I am, after all, a most impressive fellow!” He laughed again. “In fact, the three of us are most impressive people!”

He poured three goblets of wine with his own hand, lifted his own in toast. “Surely we can drink to that!”

Thus far, the little play he had set up was going quite nicely, but it was best not to rush things. So, as servants brought course after course and he poured goblet after goblet, Caesar contented himself with pretending to drink more than he really was, cozening Vercingetorix into drinking more wine than your beer-guzzling Gaul would be used to, and listening to the hopefully future lovers catch up on their brief childhood memories and banter about their divergent paths into adulthood.

Romans did water their wine to diminish its intoxicating effect when they were struck by an attack of abstemiousness, but it was more often done to ameliorate the harshness of a mediocre vintage, such as what was usually palmed off on the Gauls. Caesar had, however, laid on an excellent vintage, the watering of which would have been an outrage to Bacchus—not because he imagined that Vercingetorix could be a connoisseur, but so that it would glide down his throat smoothly and rapidly at full strength.

He had not written Marah’s part in the drama beyond telling her who the third party at the feast would be and letting her know that he knew of their youthful connection, playing the avuncular older lover stepping aside to become matchmaker to the young couple. For, as any practical sophist knew, the best dissimulations were those that cut closest to the truth.

And so he ate, and he drank sparingly, and he listened to Vercingetorix tell Marah the brief story of his life, and he listened to Marah extolling the virtues of a Roman education and Roman civilization. He didn’t move to channel the proceedings in the chosen direction until Vercingetorix was somewhat drunk and their conversation was approaching the edge of acrimony.

“You sound as if you are
glad
to have been taken hostage by Rome, Marah.”

“And indeed I am! Had I not been, knowing what I know now, I would have volunteered!”

“Volunteered to be a hostage!”

“Gladly, if that were the price of a Roman education. Without it, what would I be?”

“The wife of an Arverne vergobret?”

“A girl given in marriage to seal an alliance between the Arverni and the Carnutes.”

“And what would have been so bad about that?”

“Between a boy and a girl there should be something more.”

“And there was not?”

“I didn’t say that . . . but were we not both to be used to help Keltill become king of Gaul? A plan foredoomed to failure.”

“The wrong man with the right idea,” said Caesar, seizing his opportunity.

“The right idea? To drive your legions into the sea?”

“That was the foredoomed part. But giving Gaul a king . . .”

For the first time in a long while, Vercingetorix’s gaze was drawn away from Marah. His eyes were bloodshot and somewhat glazed, and what Caesar beheld was an inexperienced youth seeking a way out of an argument with a woman his lust sought to woo, but behind the boy was a man, and that was whom Caesar sought to address now.

With a negligent wave of his hand, he ordered the servants and musicians to leave.

“I’ve been in Gaul long enough to know that the political system here just doesn’t work,” he said when the three of them were alone.