The house was quiet. After a while he heard a door open, a brief conversation too muffled to catch the words, and then a door closing again. He waited. There was an old army story of a centurion receiving special orders in a base on the Rhine. Before the day was out he was rushed away, carried south by the coaches of the imperial post. They took him over the Alps, down to Puteoli, where a ship was waiting to take him over the Mediterranean to Alexandria. From there it was down the Nile, then into the desert and along the wild roads to the ports on the Red Sea, where traders used the mysterious winds of those waters to fetch silks and spices from the Far East. Reporting to the prefect commanding the garrison there, the man expressed complete surprise. ‘Not been told a thing about you or what you are supposed to do here. Did they tell you?’
‘No, my lord.’
‘Oh well, expect we will work something out in the end.’ Depending on who told the story, it took a whole year or even three years before the man was sent back to his legion, with no one any the wiser about what it had all been for.
‘Ferox, my dear fellow, you seem deep in thought?’ The speaker was short and bald save for a wild fringe of white hair. Quintus Ovidius was a philosopher and poet, a junior member of the Senate and friend of the legate, who had accompanied him to his province.
Ferox smiled broadly. He had always liked the spritely old man, and since Ovidius had accompanied them on their desperate attack on the pirates’ stronghold, he had come to respect him as well. ‘I fear I was pondering on the nature of the army’s administration.’
‘Intriguing, no doubt, though probably not satisfying. How are you, my friend?’
They talked for a while, Ovidius explaining that, although the legate was detained, as soon as he had learned that Ferox was in the house, he had rushed to see him. ‘Although I fear this reunion is soured by some sad news. Caratacus is dead. Word arrived from Rome nine days ago. I am very sorry.’
‘He was old.’ Caratacus had been well over ninety, and had been frail the last time Ferox had seen him, some twelve years ago.
‘Sadly it was not age that claimed him in the end. He was murdered in the gardens of his villa in the Alban Hills.’ Ovidius had only a few details. A woman and two men had appeared late at night asking for shelter. It was some sort of feast day for Caratacus’ people, and his custom to walk alone save for a boy in the grounds from midnight until dawn. The boy fled when the guests came for him, blades in their hands, and when the house was turned out they found the old man stabbed to death.
‘Did they take his torc?’ Ferox knew the answer before Ovidius nodded in surprise. At that moment the slave reappeared, announcing that the legate was ready to see him. Ovidius followed and it was clear that the legate desired his presence as well. They found Neratius Marcellus sitting at a desk, still at work. He was clad only in a pale blue tunic, belt and shoes whose lattice pattern gave glimpses of his blue socks. A slave handed him a succession of open writing tablets, which he signed, said should be added to the pile of other matters that did not demand a swift reply, or rejected by simply scratching a cross with his stylus. ‘Tell them no.’ He flashed a brief smile to the visitors and urged them to sit. Two folding camp chairs were on either side of a table. Another slave brought well-watered wine, since it was early in the day.
At long last the batch of correspondence was finished, the slaves left and the legate breathed a sigh of relief. He was a small man, who reminded Ferox of a restless bird, always on the move, and it was strange to see him sitting still. ‘It won’t be long before Tiro is back with an even higher stack.’
‘Perhaps you shouldn’t have bought a clerk called Tiro if you did not want to spend your life scribbling,’ Ovidius said. The governor glanced at Ferox, watching intently.
‘Cicero’s trusted freedman was named Tiro,’ Ferox explained. ‘He prepared the letters for publication after his old master’s death. I’ve always suspected he snipped out a lot that was embarrassing to Atticus.’
They did not nod or show any obvious signs of approval, and paid him the respect of not expressing surprised pleasure.
‘There will be two more weeks of this,’ Neratius Marcellus went on wearily. ‘Then it is almost four months of assizes, here, at Camulodunum, Lindum and a few of the civitas capitals.’ He gave a grim laugh. ‘The price of office.’
Ovidius showed little sympathy. ‘If you had wanted to cling to the City as Cicero advised, you could easily have done so, my friend. We both know that dignified leisure has never really suited you.’
‘Neither is it likely to be my fate for several years at the least.’ The legate drummed his fingers on the table top. ‘Forgive me, Ferox, for not welcoming you with greater warmth, but it is not even noon and I have spent hours returning the morning greeting of visitors, reading or listening to petitions, both formal, and the “while I have your ear, my lord, may I ask…”, whether it is about business or justice, favours or little matters such as the leadership of a great tribe. Your failure to arrive kept me listeing to such tedious matters even longer than duty commanded.’
Ferox did not bother to explain. With senior officers there was rarely any point unless they asked a direct question.
‘No matter,’ the legate continued. ‘When I sent for you it was for one reason, but now I find that I need you for something else, so it is convenient that you are here, for I will keep you busy. I only wish that you had arrived a few days earlier.’ The legate sprang to his feet. He was always happier talking while on the move and they made no attempt to rise and join him.
‘Something is wrong. I have been in Britannia long enough to sense it in the faces who greet me and come asking for favours. They are nervous. I remember seeing faces like that in the last years of Nero, when I was a mere boy, and again under the unlamented last of the Flavians, when I probably looked much the same. There is fear, a sense that things will change soon, without any clear sign of which way they will change. That was why I wanted you in the first place. I have come to value your instincts, your knowledge of the tribes, and your talent for sniffing out the truth.’
‘Although it means inflicting another letter upon you, my lord, I received this from Tincommius, the High King…’
‘Of the Venicones and the rest?’ Neratius Marcellus grinned. ‘I do pay attention, every now and again. Show it to Ovidius, so that he can be useful for a change, and tell me what was in it.’
Ferox told him about Acco’s promises and the king’s warning about a plot among the Romans.
‘Hmm.’ The legate paced from one end of the room to the other and back again. ‘Yes, I fear that once again some fools in the Senate are restless. For some it will be sheer vanity, for a few probably the belief that they act for the good of Rome, even if that will cost us a civil war. “Where are you rushing to fools…”’
‘That’s Horace, my lord,’ Ferox explained.
Ovidius snorted in amusement. The legate frowned. ‘Well, perhaps I deserved that.’ He began pacing again, and his arms started to wave, the gestures apparently natural and yet always under control. Many senators were a great loss to the stage.
‘It is forty years since Boudicca burned this town to the ground, and others, and slaughtered a hundred thousand or even more. The owner of this house, who graciously loans it to the legate without charge out of duty to the res publica – and of course to show what a fine and rich gentleman he is – remembers fleeing with his parents, when Suetonius Paulinus abandoned Londinium to its fate, taking only those who could keep up with his cavalry, and leaving behind by the roadside any who discovered that they could not. It really is not that long ago, and yet all of my senior officers and all the tribal leaders assure me that it would be unthinkable now. The eagerness with which they assert this only makes me more sceptical.’ He turned dramatically to face Ferox, who wondered whether performance came so naturally to trained orators that they actually forgot that they were performing. ‘What do you think?’