“We can settle that when the time comes,” I said contentedly. I thought privately that I’d sleep well even in a house, if I were sleeping beside Pervica.
XI
My men received their first pay packet the day Pervica arrived at Cilurnum, two days before the festival. All the other troops on the Wall had been paid already: our pay was late because of all the negotiations. The amount we were finally given was the standard auxiliary pay-two hundred denarii a year-plus an allowance for one and three quarter horses, with another extra amount for the upkeep of our armor. It was less than I’d wanted, but, it must be said, a considerable advance on the first offers and more than the Asturians were getting. The usual half had been deducted to pay for rations, and another variable amount for horse fodder and replacement of equipment. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that the total had been backdated to the time we left Aquincum: it was a substantial amount. Moreover, the captains were given seventeen times the basic rate of pay, an even more substantial amount, and one that could help smooth over any short-term troubles with debt. Since arriving in Cilurnum, we’d bought anything that needed buying with whatever money or valuables we’d taken with us, and I’d been watching the first stirrings of trouble with shopkeepers and moneylenders. Now we were in the clear again. With the pay we were also given a notice from the legate, relaxing one of the restrictions on us: the men could now apply to me for permission to leave the fort, in groups not smaller than three nor larger than sixteen, and could stay away up to three nights if that permission were granted. This meant that they could go hunting or ride into Corstopitum to spend their money, and otherwise behave more like free men than prisoners.
I drew the dragon up and made a severe speech warning the men against moneylenders and the dangers of getting into debt, then brought them all into the chapel of the standards in the fort headquarters, where the clinking bags were handed out beneath the impassive gaze of the statue of the man we’d sworn our oaths to at Aquincum. The men went off in a proper holiday mood to prepare for the Sada feast.
I found their excitement depressing. Six months before we had scarcely known what money was: now, even the slowest man in the dragon had been able to understand instantly that he earned more than the Asturians did. I was tired and irritable when I limped back to the chapel of the standards to check over the final accounts with Eukairios and the Asturians’ treasurer, who had the key to the strong room. It was late in the afternoon by then. Halfway through the accounting, I noticed another pay box under the table, and I heaved it up and shoved it across at Eukairios. “What is this for?” I asked him. He answered, with a smile, “The commander’s pay, my lord.”
“Oh,” I said. Eukairios went on copying pay chits into two registers. I sat beside him, ready to countersign the pages with the scrawled dragon mark I’d been using since Bononia. “How much is it?” I asked, after a minute.
Eukairios set down his pen and laughed. He shook his head, picked up the pen again. “I’ll have to tell that one to Longus,” he said.
“You’ll have to tell me what?” said Longus himself, striding into the chapel.
Eukairios put down the pen again. “Lord Flavinus, I have written, at my master’s dictation, some sixty or seventy letters about the dragon’s pay and allowances. He’s given presents to officials in the legate’s office, the governor’s office, the grain commissary, and the treasury. He has, as you know, come up with complicated schemes to pay for the horses. We’ve worried over the price of glue to mend bows and the cost of a blacksmith’s furnace. Would you have thought there was any detail of this troop’s finances he didn’t know about?”
“No,” said Longus-expectantly.
Eukairios pointed at the box. “The commander’s pay.”
“Isn’t it thirty thousand a year?”
Eukairios started laughing again. I looked at him in exasperation. I was not in a mood for jokes. “You should not laugh at me,” I told him.
He sobered quickly. “It is thirty thousand a year, my lord, as Lord Flavinus Longus said. Fifteen thousand now. Item: fifteen thousand denarii for the commander’s pay, here.” He flipped a page in his ledger. “You countersign there.”
I countersigned and picked up the box containing fifteen thousand denarii. It was very heavy. Quite suddenly I loathed it, and hated the tomblike, stone-walled chapel, the standards along the wall, and particularly the statue of the emperor with his preoccupied, philosophical face. I had been a prince, and owned herds and flocks; I had led raids, and traded with the East; I had held a scepter and judged the disputes of my dependants. Now I was a hireling. I wanted to hurl the box at that smug statue-but that would be sacrilege and treason. I put down my wages again.
“Put it back in the strong room for now,” I ordered Eukairios.
“Yes, my lord.” He put down his pen again and got up to obey, and I noticed that he looked even wearier than usual. He had, of course, done most of the work for the payday, checking over the accounts, keeping the books, writing out the five hundred pay chits that now had to be copied over in duplicate. “Wait,” I ordered, and he stopped. I unlocked the box, picked up a stack of the coins, and counted out a hundred of them, the same amount as my men had been allotted for their first six months’ basic salary. “A financial detail you also were unaware of,” I said, pushing the money toward him. “The commander’s scribe’s pay.”
I was unprepared for his reaction. He went white, then red, and stared at me as though I’d insulted him. He didn’t touch the money. “You can’t do that,” he said at last.
“Why not?”
“You don’t pay slaves!”
I didn’t know how to answer that, so I shrugged. “I have chosen to pay you. If you do not wish to keep the money, dispose of it as you wish.”
He picked up the coins with shaking hands. “All my life,” he whispered, “all my life…” He looked up, blinking at tears, and seemed suddenly to register the amount. “No, you mustn’t give me this much, my lord. It would offend the men of the dragon if I got as much as they do. Here…” He pushed three little piles of ten coins back toward me, then fumbled them into the box himself, closed it, and locked it. He looked at the seven piles remaining on the table and nodded. He wiped his eyes. “All my life,” he said again, “I’ve been on the supplies ledger, not the pay ledger. Item one scribe, item rations for same.”
“Does it make much difference?” asked Longus impatiently.
“Yes,” said Eukairios, still staring at the money. “Yes, it does. It’s almost like being free.” He looked back at me and smiled shakily. He was beginning to recover himself. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “I thought-I hoped-since you’re generous, you might give me a denarius for the Saturnalia. I never expected this at all. I’ve never been paid before.”
“Nor have I,” I said. “I am glad you enjoy it.”
“Oh, so that’s it,” said Longus. “It offends your princely dignity to get wages. I wish someone would offend me with the same amount. Look, I came to tell you that my sister has just arrived back from Corstopitum with a guest of yours, and if you’re going to be a courteous host, you’d better come and greet her.”