Ferox began to approach the post like a fighter, crouching behind the shield, left leg shuffling, followed by short step with right, sword ready to seek a gap. His thigh was sore, but he did not want to let it get stiff so he forced it to move. The rider was still doing circles, although he had changed rein to ride in the other direction. This appeared to be enough for him to retain his youthful audience.
That had been all Philo had to tell that first session, and had given Ferox plenty to ponder, until his mind was dragged into the present. After the boy had gone, one of Cerialis’ slaves appeared. She was young, pretty like most of the women in his household, and he had seen her serving at table in the past.
‘My master wishes your stay to be as pleasant as possible,’ she had said, eyes staring down at his knees in the demure manner felt appropriate for servants. He guessed that she was a Gaul, pale skinned and with long brown hair plaited into a pigtail that reached halfway down her back. ‘I am at your service.’
‘That is kind of him,’ was all that he could think to say.
With an easy gesture she slid her dress off her shoulders, letting the material fall to her waist. The belt unfastened almost as quickly and the whole garment rustled down. She was bare apart from a simple pair of sandals.
Ferox wondered whether this was some sort of test. Had he said something during his fevered dreams that hinted at his love for the prefect’s wife or had Cerialis worked it out for himself? For all his open, enthusiastic manner, the commander of the Ninth Cohort was a shrewd enough man.
Philo disapproved, but the woman returned each night and attended to him efficiently enough, as she had no doubt entertained her master and a fair few of his other guests. Cerialis gave him a big wink the morning after her first visit.
Ferox hefted the practice sword and shield once again. It was better not to think, but simply to let his mind roam free. On the other side of the training field the rider clicked his tongue a couple of times as he changed direction again and urged his mount into a trot. The animal bounded, gave a small buck that prompted a scream from the little girl, and then gave in and obeyed. Ferox wondered whether he was still breaking in a fresh horse. The bay looked sleek, its hair recently trimmed and well brushed, two socks on its front legs and its face a blaze of white. When the man took the animal into a canter, still keeping to a tight circle, the group of children cheered.
Ferox did his best to ignore them. He was tired, weak from the illness and days lying idle, and his back was damp with sweat. Forcing himself to keep going for just a little longer, he stamped forward, punched the post with his wicker shield and followed with a thrust from the gladius at eye height, grunting with the effort.
Perhaps it was the nightly visits of the slave woman, but yesterday he had slipped a note to Flora, asking for an appointment. She had once been a slave, entertainer and prostitute, winning freedom and setting herself up in the same business, and was now owner of the most successful brothel in the north, catering for soldiers and, in more style and comfort, senior officers. Cerialis was a frequent visitor to the big house on the edge of the vicus, built partly in stone and with two storeys so that it stood out among all the other civilian buildings.
Earlier that morning, Ferox had gone at the stated time to see the mistress of the house. The place had a subdued, exhausted air after yesterday’s festival, but the clerk and guards were as welcoming as ever. Flora had always been small, even though her voice and most of all her earthy laugh sounded as if they came from a great fat woman. Today Ferox thought she looked even smaller and a lot older. Now and again she coughed, a deep racking cough that shook her slight frame.
‘Doesn’t the sun ever get warm in this benighted place?’ she had asked of no one in particular. Ferox was never quite sure why Flora had set up house at Vindolanda. There was an old bond with Longinus, but she had come here years before he arrived with cohors VIIII, so that did not explain it. Once, on a rare occasion when she had drunk so much that her tongue loosened, she had hinted at some trouble in Londinium years before.
‘How’s your boy?’ Flora asked next. They were alone, sitting in her plain office as they had often done in the past. A slave had brought them wine, but the mistress herself poured it into crystal cups, adding plenty of water to the one she offered to Ferox. ‘Glad to see you have stopped making a beast of yourself.’ In the lonely years at Syracuse, rejected by the army, tortured by dark memories of interrogations and executions, and lost because the woman he had loved above all had vanished, Ferox had been prone to days of heavy drinking. Flora had stayed his friend throughout those hard years.
‘I think Marcus is well,’ he said after a moment. Ferox never knew how Flora had discovered that Sulpicia Lepidina’s baby was his and not her husband’s. She always seemed to know almost everything that happened in and around Vindolanda, and in the wider world.
‘He is,’ she stated firmly, pausing as she relished a long sip of her own wine. Even watered down, Ferox could tell that it was good. ‘Poor mite was a bit crook last month, but he’s better now. Good solid lad, although let’s hope he takes more after his mother than his father.’
Ferox laughed. He had not seen Flora for months and had missed these quiet talks. They chatted for a while, for that was their custom, and then he asked a few questions about Narcissus.
‘Don’t know much.’ Flora usually began that way, but this time there was some truth in it. She told him about the freedmen and their rivalry as collectors, adding only a little to what he already knew. Narcissus was not a visitor. ‘And don’t look as if I was stating the blindingly obvious. I’ve been in this trade more years than I care to remember and seen things even a nasty little sod like you wouldn’t dream. Some eunuchs still like to be entertained.’
Vegetus was a regular visitor. ‘The randy pig. Oh, doesn’t do any harm, but the girls say he struts as if he’s Herakles. Losing his wife made him worse, but he was bad enough before.’ Two years ago, Vegetus’ flirtatious wife had been abducted by warriors loyal to a savage priest who called himself the Stallion. They had meant to take Sulpicia Lepidina, but Ferox had saved her and still felt guilty because at the time he had given no thought to anyone else. He and Vindex had found the poor woman’s corpse the next day.
‘Did you get them all?’ Flora asked.
The Stallion was long dead, along with a good few of his followers, but others were still out there, most of all Acco, a true druid who had aided the Stallion and then carved him up as a sacrifice once he failed. ‘No, not yet,’ Ferox said. ‘One day I will.’
‘The freedmen were up to something,’ Flora said after they had sat in silence for some time. ‘They may be the emperor’s men, but that doesn’t tie them to the same emperor we have at the moment.’
‘Do you know something?’
Flora shook her head, which meant that it was a guess, but she had a nose for politics, which always made Ferox wonder all the more about her past. Once or twice she had admitted that she and Longinus had been through a lot together.
‘Something is brewing. There’s still folk out there who reckon Trajan is not the right man to be princeps. Others just out for the main chance. Three weeks ago a trader calling himself Domitius stopped for a few days. Old man – older even than me!’ Flora laughed that deep, incongruous laugh of hers. ‘A Gaul from his speech, but maybe not one who has been home in a long while. No ring, even though he threw money around as if he had no lack of it.’ Equestrians were marked by a distinctive silver ring. ‘I wondered whether he didn’t want too much attention. Men of his type usually get a formal welcome from the prefect, however much he may pretend to despise people in trade.’