Numonius came out. He was short and skinny and bowlegged: he looked like a cavalry officer, in other words. The nod he gave Arminius was somewhere between matter-of-fact and friendly. “The governor told me he would see you in a little while,” he said.
“Thank you,” Arminius replied. Admitting he’d overheard the conversation would have been rude, even if the Roman had to know he had. The rule among the Germans was much the same.
Aristocles bustled into the back of the tent. He and Varus went back and forth in Greek. Arminius had learned a couple of curses in that language, but didn’t speak it. Then the pedisequus returned. “I have the honor of escorting you into the governor’s illustrious presence,” he told Arminius.
“Good,” the German said. About time, he thought. Some of his folk would have come right out and said so. He might have himself, before he went off to Pannonia to learn Roman ways. Having learned them, he tried to use them to advantage.
Publius Quinctilius Varus sat in a chair with a back, which proved him a very important personage indeed. He didn’t rise when Arminius came before him. Arminius stiffened to attention, as he would have to a senior Roman officer on campaign, and shot out his right arm with his fist clenched.
Varus smiled. He waved Arminius to a stool. “So you’re the chap who’s too fond of his lady love, are you?” he said. Was he laughing at Arminius or with him? The German couldn’t tell. He often had trouble figuring out what Romans meant.
Straight ahead, then. “No, sir. It wasn’t that. Segestes hurt my honor when he took her away from me and tried to give her to Tudrus.”
“Tried to give . . . Yesss.” Varus stretched out the last word. He frowned at Arminius. “This Segestes says some hard things about you.”
Arminius weighed the words - and the frown. Varus was about his father’s age, but a very different man. Sigimerus was tough and hard, like seasoned timber. Romans could be like that; Arminius had met plenty who were. Varus wasn’t. He didn’t seem like a fighting man to the German. The Romans had people who did nothing but gather supplies for their armies - quartermasters, they called them. The notion had never occurred to the Germans, but it worked. Maybe Varus was stamped from that mold.
Or maybe he really was a fighting man no matter how he looked. With the Romans, you never could tell. Arminius had met one military tribune who acted more like a woman than a proper man had any business doing. But the fellow was a terror, a demon, on the battlefield.
How to reply? With a smile and a shrug he used like a shield to hide what he was really thinking, Arminius said, “Well, he would, wouldn’t he? If he can make me look bad, he doesn’t seem like a fool and a liar and an oathbreaker himself.”
“This, uh, Thusnelda.” Varus pronounced the name badly. He put this in front of a lot of Germans’ names, as if they were things, not people. “She is happy with you?”
“Yes, sir!” This time, Arminius didn’t hesitate at all.
Quinctilius Varus noticed. He might not be a fighting man, but he wasn’t stupid. Amusement glinted in his dark eyes. “I see,” he said. “And you’re happy with her, too, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir, I am.” How could Arminius explain it to the Roman? “I did not take her because I thought we would be happy, but I am glad we are.”
The glint became a smile - a small smile, but a smile even so. “How old are you, Arminius?”
Before the German answered, he had to count on his fingers. “I am twenty-four, sir. Why?”
“Because you make me jealous,” Varus said. “It is so easy to be happy with a woman - almost any woman - when you’re twenty-four. When you’re thirty-four or forty-four or fifty-four . . .”He sighed.
Arminius’ mother and father took each other for granted. They were content with each other, anyhow. Happy? He’d never wondered about it. He knew the Romans’ laws let them change wives - and, for that matter, husbands - almost as readily as they changed clothes. His folk did things differently. Maybe that meant German men and women had to make the best of each other.
As for fifty-four ... To twenty-four, fifty-four was a journey greater than the one from Germany to Pannonia and back again. Fifty-four was a journey greater than one from Germany to Rome itself and back again. Arminius could imagine going down to Rome. He’d seen Roman towns in Pannonia, and along the Rhine. He imagined the imperial capital as something like a bigger version of one of those, something like an outsized legionary encampment.
He couldn’t imagine fifty-four at all. An old man, aching, with bad teeth and short wind? Varus didn’t seem as ancient as all that, but he was graying and balding. He’d seen better days, all right. At the height of his own strength, Arminius felt a sudden, startling sympathy - almost pity - for the Roman.
He also knew what Varus had to be thinking. Varus wouldn’t want trouble from the Germans. A governor who wasn’t a soldier wouldn’t want anything but peace and quiet. If Arminius gave them to him . . .
“I do not seek a blood feud with Segestes,” Arminius said. “This I swear, by my gods and yours. I have Thusnelda. She is enough. She satisfies my honor. I do not need to spike her father’s head to a tree.”
Quinctilius Varus’ mouth twisted. Too late, Arminius realized he might have left off that last sentence. The Romans worshiped effete gods who drank blood, but not man’s blood. How strong could they be if they turned their backs on strong food?
Then Varus chuckled, and then he smiled a broad smile. “You may be a Roman citizen, but some of your ways are still German,” he observed.
“It is so,” Arminius said simply.
“But you do pledge that this matter is over now, as far as you are concerned?” the Roman official persisted.
“I said it. I meant it,” Arminius answered.
Varus smiled again - wistfully. “No, you are not altogether a Roman. What we say and what we mean too often have little to do with each other. A pity, but the truth. When you say something, I believe I can rely on it.”
“I am glad of that, sir,” Arminius said. And so he was. When he spoke to his own folk, he was indeed the soul of truth. When he spoke to Romans . . . He’d learned enough from the invaders to know how to turn their own arts against them. He could dissemble and never let on. He could, not to put too fine a point on it, lie. He could, and he did.
“All right, then. Go home. Stay there quietly. Enjoy your woman, this, uh, Thusnelda.” No, Varus couldn’t come close to pronouncing the German name. He went on, “I will tell this Segestes that there is to be no feud. He will hearken to me.”
He is your dog, Arminius thought. Again, what went through his mind didn’t show on his face. “It is good,” he said. “I thank you.”
Varus waved that aside. “It’s all right, son,” he said, and paused thoughtfully. “Do you know, you remind me a little of my own son. You’re bigger, you’re fairer, but something about the way you hold your head. . . .” He laughed. “Something about the way you hold back, too, so you don’t tell me off.”
Arminius was alarmed, but only for a moment. This Roman hadn’t looked into his heart and seen his hatred for the Empire. No, Varus, an older man, had looked at a young man and seen one eager to be free from the restraints older men put on him. Varus didn’t need to be a wizard to do that. He only needed to be a man who remembered what being young was like.
Sure enough, he went on, “Gaius is in Athens now, finishing up his education.” He paused again. “Come to think of it, you’ve had a bit of an education in Roman ways yourself, haven’t you? Not the same kind of education, but an education even so.”