“I was not the only one who felt his manhood threatened when the Romans robbed us here. They have more ways to make men eunuchs than just by cutting.” As Sigimerus had before him, Arminius cupped his right hand over his genitals.
Sigimerus sighed again. “If you will not set this aside, I had better give you all the help I can. By the gods, son, you’ll need it, and more besides. I only hope you find everything you need, that’s all.”
A smile like the sun coming out from behind storm clouds lit Arminius’ face. “If we struggle together, how can we lose?”
“There are ways,” Sigimerus replied. “There are always ways.”
Quinctilius Varus looked at the accounts his secretaries had compiled. He knew how much the Roman provincial administration took from Syria every year. Germany had yielded barely a twentieth part of that. Yes, this land was poor. How could it be anything else when it had scant gold or silver of its own and when neither the olive nor the vine wanted to grow here? Even if the natives weren’t so barbarous, those would have been important entries in the ledger’s debit columns.
Varus understood as much, anyhow. Varus had seen Germany with his own eves. Now that he and the legions were abandoning Mindenum for the winter, he could put seeing Germany with his own eyes in the same place all his other memories went. Yes, he’d come back next spring. He didn’t have to dwell on that just yet, though. He didn’t have to, and he didn’t intend to.
Augustus hadn’t seen Germany with his own eyes, though. Augustus, fortunate soul, had never crossed the Rhine. What would the ruler of the Roman Empire think when he saw the paltry sum Varus had extracted from this province? How angry would he be?
Were Varus but a little bolder, a little nervier, he would have cooked the books before his wife’s great-uncle ever set eves on them. But he didn’t have the guts - didn’t have the balls - to risk it. His greatest fear (one that, by the nature of things, he had to keep to himself) was that Augustus had a spy, or more than one, secreted somewhere within his own retinue. If he gave Augustus one set of figures himself, while the spy delivered a different and significantly worse set . . .
The mere idea made Quinctilius Varus shudder. All sorts of nasty little desert islands scattered through the Mediterranean. Varus didn’t want to spend the rest of his days on one. And he might, if he got caught telling that big a lie.
Being married to Claudia Pulchra wouldn’t pull his chestnuts out of the fire, not if Augustus got angry enough. Augustus’ grand-niece’s husband? So what? Augustus’ own daughter had spent five years on the island of Pandataria, forbidden wine and all male company not specifically approved by her father, before winning a slightly milder exile in Rhegium, on the toe of the Italian boot.
Of course, Julia was guilty of gross immorality, where Varus would only have embezzled. After being used like a game piece in Augustus’ dynastic plans - none of which worked out the way he wanted - Julia hadn’t cared what she did, as long as it scandalized her father. Varus, for better or worse, was far less flamboyant.
He sighed. “Are you all right, sir?” Aristocles asked.
Letting the pedisequus hear what was on his mind wouldn’t do. “I suppose so,” he said. “Gods know I’ll be glad to get away from Mindenum. Who that wasn’t crazy wouldn’t be?”
“You’re right about that!” Usually, Varus had to wonder whether a slave was sincere. Not this time. Aristocles couldn’t stand Germany or the Germans, and didn’t bother trying to hide how he felt.
“Vetera’s not exactly a triple six, either,” Varus said. Rome would have been the best throw at dice. So would Athens or Alexandria. Antioch, the capital of Roman Syria, came pretty close. Vetera . . . didn’t.
“Better than Mindenum.” Aristocles’ wave encompassed what was left of the legionary encampment. Troops didn’t overwinter here, not yet. When they left for land more firmly in Roman hands, they made sure they either took along or destroyed everything the locals could use. They took all the iron in the camp - everything from surgeons’ scalpels to horse trappings to hobnails to spoons. Anything left behind, German smiths would pound into spearheads or knives or swords. The soldiers burned all the timber in the camp. They would cut more next spring. When they were on the march, they built a fresh encampment every day. They didn’t mind wrecking this semi-permanent place.
“One of these days, this will be a Roman city in its own right,” Varus said. “Plenty of towns in Africa and Spain and Gaul started out as legionary camps. They’re respectable enough now.”
“I suppose so.” His pedisequus didn’t sound convinced. “Those weren’t stuck out in the middle of nowhere, though.”
Instead of arguing, Quinctilius Varus hid a smile. Aristocles was determined to despise Mindenum no matter what. Back when the Empire was younger and smaller, plenty of towns that now seemed comfortable and near the center of things would have been frontier posts fit only for soldiers.
Vala Numonius came up and saluted Varus. “We’re ready to head back to the Rhine, sir,” the cavalry commander said. “I won’t be sorry to see the last of this place for a while, and that’s the truth.”
Varus glanced over at Aristocles. The slave radiated agreement the way a red-hot piece of iron on an anvil radiated heat. Varus pretended not to notice. But he couldn’t help saying, “Well, neither will I.”
Before long, the legionaries would slog through the mud and the muck to the headwaters of the Lupia. After that, the going would get easier. Boats would take many of them down the river to the Rhine. Roman forts on the banks would make sure the Germans could only watch. The arrangement worked well enough, but it didn’t strike Varus as suitably triumphant.
“We ought to march through Germany,” he said. “We ought to show the natives we can go where we want whenever we care to.”
“Yes, sir,” Aristocles said resignedly.
“What’s the matter? You don’t like the idea?” Quinctilius Varus was sensitive to his slave’s shifts of inflection.
“Sir, I am delighted to march out of Germany,” the pedisequus replied. “As for marching through Germany . . . There’s nowhere in this miserable country I care to go to. As far as I’m concerned, the barbarians are welcome to every last inch of it.”
Since Varus held a similar opinion, he couldn’t exactly tell Aristocles he was wrong. “One of these days, this will make a fine province,” he said, hoping he sounded as if he meant it. “We just have to finish bringing it into the Empire, that’s all.”
Aristocles took an incautious step back and squelched in mud that tried to suck the sandal off his foot. Clothes that would have been perfect anywhere around the Mediterranean proved less than ideal here. Tunics and togas were drafty; no wonder the Germans wore trousers under their swaddling cloaks - the ones who could afford to wear anything under those cloaks, anyhow. And boots stayed on and protected the feet better than sandals.
Muttering in disgust, Aristocles cleaned his sandal and his foot as best he could with a tuft of grass he pulled up from the ground. “It would serve the Germans right if we left them to their own barbarous devices,” he said. “They don’t deserve to be part of the Empire.”
Again, Varus felt the same way. His opinion, however, wasn’t what mattered here. “Augustus wants this province. He has his reasons. And what Augustus wants, Augustus gets.” That had been true for almost as long as Varus was alive, and Varus, as he knew too well, was no longer young. It might as well have been a law of nature.
“Augustus has never seen this country. He’s never seen these barbarians.” Aristocles pulled up more grass. He swiped it across a muddy spot he’d missed before. “By the gods, sir, if he had seen them he wouldn’t want them.”
Quinctilius Varus laughed. He imagined Augustus surveying the outpost at Mindenum. It wasn’t that Augustus had never taken the field - he’d beaten Rome’s finest marshals during the civil war after Julius Caesar’s murder. But Augustus was, without a doubt, a creature of the Mediterranean. Imagining him here in these gloomy woods was like imagining a fish in the Egyptian desert. The picture didn’t want to form.